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Denmark's Genius Housing Fix

In a cruel twist, millions of Americans are trapped in their homes by low mortgage rates. Denmark's housing market offers a tantalizing alternative.

A gummed-up housing market is good for nobody: First-time buyers can't find enough homes for sale, and wannabe sellers remain trapped in places that are either too big or too small. Buyers may remember the pandemic-era housing market for its worst qualities: the bidding wars, the late-night doomscrolling on Zillow, the smug investors bragging on TikTok about how many homes they flipped that month. Banks would demand borrowers pay higher interest rates from the start of their loans, Jesper Berg, the former director of the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority, told me.

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