[keerk43]

Owning a share of the building has its own issues as well though. If your neighbours suck and don't care about maintaining the building adequately, then you're basically out of luck. Even worse, at least here in Finland some older apartment buildings in smaller cities are worth too little to get funding from bank for larger renovations, effectively making them impossible to do unless every tenant is capable and willing of getting a personal loan.

I will never buy an apartment from reasons mentioned above. Just way too risky, at least with my own house it would be up to me what gets done and what doesn't.

[ClumsyPilot]

Certainly its a difficult subject, but I prefer owning something, rather than leasehold "renting for 100 years" as if we still have feudalism

[VBprogrammer]

Freehold is one thing on a block of flats. The poor people who got conned into buying a house on a freehold basis where the legal protection for rent increases doesn't apply. That is a different matter.