Dozens of "Finnish cottages" bought up in Ostrava — tenants face rent hikes worth thousands of crowns

In Ostrava, dozens of so-called Finnish cottages — where mining families have sometimes lived for several generations — have changed hands, and the new owners have begun sharply raising rents while refusing to renew leases for some tenants. Nearly 90 of these houses recently passed from the company Heimstaden to Bo! Holding of Třinec via its subsidiary Nemovitosti Morava Epsilon, which almost immediately resold most of them to new investors.

Houses from the 1950s

The so-called Finnish cottages were built around the turn of the 1940s and 1950s, shortly after the communist coup. They were handed out to miners as temporary housing — the wooden structures were designed to last no more than 30 years. Yet the houses are still standing today, largely because long-term tenants invested their own money into their upkeep, sometimes hundreds of thousands of crowns.

After the Velvet Revolution, the housing stock of the OKD company — which included more than 40,000 flats and hundreds of cottages in mining settlements — went through a scandal-ridden privatization. Since then, the properties have changed hands several times: first RPG Byty, then Residomo, and from 2020 Heimstaden. Each owner tried to sell the houses to tenants at a good price, but many refused — some lacked the money, others didn't want to take on debt, and besides, renting suited them just fine. The situation was further complicated by the fact that the houses are semi-detached, meaning a sale required the consent of tenants on both sides.

Rents jump sharply

For many families, an unpleasant awakening has now arrived. Some tenants have fixed-term contracts that used to be renewed automatically — but the new owners are increasingly refusing to extend them, planning instead to renovate the houses and rent them out to wealthier clients. Those who are offered renewal are being told to accept a steep rent increase. Tenants with open-ended contracts — typically descendants of miners who have lived there for decades — are facing similar pressure.

One of them, Karel Petřík, agreed to the new terms even though he technically wasn't obliged to. "Under Heimstaden I paid 9,600 crowns a month. Now I pay 14,000," he said. That's nearly two-thirds of his pension, on top of more than two thousand crowns a month for electricity and water. "I'm almost 70. I'd rather just pay and avoid trouble. The new owner is a young guy from Kopřivnice, and he promised I could live out my days here. It was a serious conversation, and I think things will be fine," the man admitted, adding that he had no real alternative: "I'd sooner throw myself under a train than move into a panel block. I've lived here since I was a child."

Some tenants decide to fight back

Not everyone is ready to accept the new terms. One resident of a Finnish cottage, who asked not to be named, said the new owner demanded she pay 15,000 crowns instead of nine thousand, and wanted to replace her open-ended contract with a fixed one-year lease. She refused. A few days later, the owner lowered the sum by a few thousand crowns, but even that seemed excessive to her. "So I hired a lawyer, because I believe this kind of rent increase is illegal," she said. According to her, other neighbours have had similar experiences, though they too prefer to remain anonymous.

Read also: Rental scams in Prague: how to spot a fraud

Source: novinky.cz