Why does a square metre of a studio cost more than one of a three-room apartment?

How big the difference is

Apartments are compared by price per m², because it is the only figure that makes homes of different sizes seemingly comparable. It works poorly in one respect: a square metre of a small apartment costs more than one of a large apartment. The difference is so systematic that it can be measured.

When the realised price per m² of studios in each postcode area is compared with that of apartments with three or more rooms in the same area, the result is this: a square metre of a studio is more expensive in 93 of 114 areas, and the typical difference is +13%. The comparison is always made within the area, so location is controlled for. What remains is what the buyer actually pays more per square metre for.

In euros, in the median area, where the price per m² of a 3+ room apartment is €2,550/m², it means that a 30 m² studio costs about €86,300 rather than €76,500, i.e. €9,800 more than at the price per m² of a large apartment.

A two-room apartment is not a smaller three-room one

The usual explanation for the difference is that the price per m² falls steadily as size increases: the bigger the apartment, the cheaper the square metre. The data does not support this. When the same comparison is made for two-room apartments, their price per m² in the median of 114 areas is +1% relative to three-room apartments, i.e. practically the same.

So the discount does not grow gradually with size; it is a single jump: a studio is a different product, while two- and three-room apartments are the same product in different sizes. The explanation is structural. The kitchen, bathroom and hall cost roughly the same to build regardless of how many square metres surround them, and in a studio they make up most of the home. The difference between a two-room and a three-room apartment is mainly one bedroom's worth of extra walls and floor, which is cheap per square metre.

The difference varies by city and sometimes reverses

At city level the range is wide, and both ends of the list are more interesting than the middle. At the top, a square metre of a studio costs 1.56 times a square metre of a three-room apartment. At the bottom are cities where the relationship has reversed: a square metre of a studio is cheaper than one of a large apartment.

The difference is largest in mid-priced areas

The ratio does not grow steadily with the area's price level; it peaks in the middle. In the cheapest and most expensive areas the difference is clearly smaller than in between:

The ends are small for the same reason in two different ways. In the most expensive areas the price of a large apartment includes a premium for the location, which a studio does not get in the same proportion, because people want space at a valuable address. In the cheapest areas, on the other hand, the price per m² of a large apartment is already so low that there is not the same room for a studio to go upwards.

Why the difference varies: rent sets the price of a studio

A two- or three-room apartment is usually bought by someone who intends to live in it. A studio is often bought by an investor, and an investor does not pay for square metres but for rental yield. That makes a studio closer to a bond than a home in how it is priced: the price settles at the level where the yield matches what the buyer considers enough.

This can be tested. If the high price per m² of studios is the pricing of rental yield, then where studio prices are high, their gross yield should have been pushed down close to the yield of large apartments, and where nothing extra is paid for a studio, the gap in yields should be large. That is what we find: the correlation between the ratio and the yield gap across 24 cities is -0.91. The table shows the top three and bottom three cities on the list:

In the top rows, buyers pay considerably more for a studio, and its gross yield is close to, or even below, that of large apartments: the rent has already been priced in. In the bottom rows, a studio looks more attractive on paper than anywhere else, and is nevertheless cheaper per square metre than a three-room apartment in the same city.

What follows from this

• Do not compare prices per m² across size classes. A studio's higher price per m² is not a sign of overpricing, nor is a large apartment's lower price a sign of a bargain. They are different markets on the same street.
• For sellers: price a studio from studio sales. The area's general average price per m² is weighted towards larger apartments and typically leaves money on the table.
• For buyers: if you are buying to live in it and are weighing a studio against a small two-room apartment, compare total prices rather than prices per m², because the extra square metres are exceptionally cheap at that point.
• For investors: a low studio price per m² relative to large apartments is a signal, not a discount. It tells you that nobody is willing to price the area's rental yield in.

The service's own estimate handles this by choosing the reference data: the area's price per m² is taken from the property's own apartment type (studio, two rooms, three rooms or more), so size is controlled for and needs no separate coefficient. The exception is terraced houses, for which Statistics Finland publishes only one figure for all sizes at postcode level, and this cannot be fixed by fetching more data, because the breakdown by number of rooms does not exist there; instead, 6 percentage points are added to the estimate range for terraced and semi-detached houses. The full list of factors is in the article what affects an apartment's price.

How the figures were calculated

• Source: Statistics Finland's realised sale prices of housing company apartments by postcode and apartment type (2023Q2–2026Q1*), and in the rent section the rents of non-subsidised rental apartments. The same data used by the service's area and city pages.
• The comparison is made within each area, not with national averages. Studio sales are concentrated in city centres, so the national average price of studios would be higher purely because of location. Within an area, location is controlled for.
• The areas included have at least 20 sales in both of the compared apartment types over the whole period. The threshold is on the number of sales rather than the number of published quarters, and the result is robust to it: halving or doubling the threshold moves the median by no more than a few tenths of a percentage point.
• "3+ rooms" is a Statistics Finland category that covers all apartments with at least three rooms. There is variation in size within it that has not been controlled for, so the category average leans towards wherever the area's large housing stock is.
• An average price is not the value of an individual apartment. Condition, age, floor and housing company renovations vary between apartment types and have not been controlled for. Part of the measured difference is therefore a difference in housing stock. For example, in many areas studios are on average newer.

The figures for your own area by apartment type are in the area directory, and you can calculate an estimate for a single property from a listing link on the front page.