Finding a home

When you apply for a SATOhome, your application stays valid until the last apartment in it has been rented or if you have rented a SATOhome before that.

In other words: You can keep your application active by adding new homes to it if the previous ones have for some reason not been of interest to you or if they have been rented to another home seeker.

By using the search alert you make sure that an interesting apartment won't slip by you. You can create one or more alerts and easily share it with a friend.

SATO's search alert is especially useful if you don't find a suitable home from the currently available apartments. You can add multiple filters to the search alert such as the city, district, apartment size, or maximum rent.

When it finds a suitable rental apartment, it will notify you by sending an email. You can also find the search alert at OmaSATO. If you don't need the search alert anymore, you can cancel it via a link found in any of the search alert emails you've received.

The time you spend in finding the perfect rental apartment depends on many things. In popular areas and houses the apartment turnover is much slower and there are a lot of applicants.

The size of the home you are searching for also affects the period of time. Homes with more than three bedrooms are the least common in SATO's stock and not every house necessarily has apartments this large. On the other hand, the demand for small apartments is the highest and therefore you may have to search for a small apartment with a lower rent for a long time. Because a large amount of SATO rented homes are spacious 1-bedroom apartments of around 60 sq m in floor area, they are the easiest to rent.

Please note that your apartment application remains valid until all the homes you have added to it are rented.

Some SATO rental homes are state-subsidised, which means assets of the person (or family or other people moving in) selected as a resident must meet the requirements set by the state. These apartments are marked with the ARA and/or 'Asset limitations'. The selection of tenants for these apartments is based on a needs assessment in which assets as well as housing needs and income level are used as criteria.

Most of SATO RentHomes are non-subsidised. They do not feature any state-issued restrictions, which means SATO is free to offer these homes to any of its customers.

Some SATO rental homes are state-subsidised, which means assets of the person or family selected as a resident must meet the requirements set by the state. These apartments are marked with 'Asset limitations'. The selection of tenants for these apartments is based on a needs assessment in which assets as well as housing needs and income level are used as criteria. When applying for apartments marked with 'Asset limitations', make sure you also fill in the sections on housing needs, assets and income.

Most SATO homes do not involve any criteria relating to assets or housing needs, because they are non-subsidised rental apartments.

The definite income limits in Helsinki, Espoo, Kauniainen, and Vantaa concerning new residents and home swappers are no longer valid, starting in 1st March 2018.

Please note! Always check the municipality's website for up-to-date information.

Asset limits

At times the thought of living alone may not feel right for financial reasons or because you would prefer to have some company. That is when it is a good idea to consider sharing a home.

SATO homes are available for sharing between two or more people, but the actual lease agreement is always only signed with a maximum of two tenants. In other words, if you rent a home from us with a group of friends, two of you will need to be the main tenants and the others will need to be subtenants of the main tenants. This means the main tenants will bear the primary responsibility and liability towards SATO about the apartment, while the subtenants will be responsible and liable towards the main tenants.

SATO owns around 550 rental homes for senior citizens. Senior apartments have been built with senior citizens' need in mind, and they have elevators. Most of the SATO homes for seniors are located in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area.

Most of our rental apartments agreements are written to last at least one year. However, there might occasionally be homes with shorter leases on our Find a Home page, especially when they are going to go under major renovation in the future.

Objects preventing getting a rental apartment

Unfortunately you can’t get a SATO rental home if you don’t have a Finnish personal identity code. We must be able to identify and distinguish the parties to the lease agreement in case of any disputes.

Our policy is to check the payment history of every applicant from the database of the credit information company Suomen Asiakastieto Oy. Payment defaults may prevent you from being granted a SATO home, but a single minor default does not in every case result in anapplication being rejected.

If you have paid all the bills that led to the credit defaults, we recommend you to ask Suomen Asiakastieto Oy to add a 'Ref mark' to your credit information.

If you want to discuss the effect of your possible payment defaults on your application, please fill in an application and after completing the application, contact our customer service. You can start applying by taking a look at our selection of homes and adding the ones you like the best to your application on our Find a Home page.

Yes indeed, many of our home buildings have commercial space also, as well as storage we can rent to your company. Since our homes are located in some of the best spots in the largest cities of Finland, so are our commercial spaces and storages. Be it in Helsinki Metropolitan Area, Turku, or Tampere, you can be sure our spaces are easily reached. We mainly have small to mid-sized brick-and-mortar spaces.