Finding property and opportunities
You have an address, a cadastre number or a company name. Or you have only an area and a few criteria. This page walks the route from the first search to a shortlist you can export, point by point on one plot.
From one lookup to a list
Looking up one address is cheap everywhere. What changes the work is what the answer brings with it. The registered owner comes with the ownership chain above it, the building comes with its tenants, and the neighbouring plots sit in the same view with age, use and zoned housing capacity. One plot becomes a list without you leaving the map.
The example throughout this page is Ulvenveien 111 at Ulven in Oslo, an office building from 1980 in the middle of Hovinbyen. The plot hits several of the points on the list at once: it sits in the city's largest transformation area, built-up area is 22.1% of the plot, the registered owner is a single-purpose company with two corporate levels above it, and the building has ten tenants.
Who this is for
Acquisition managers and investors looking for the next plot, asset managers and letting agents who need to fill vacant space, and B2B sellers who need to find the right company behind an address.
The checklist
| Point | What you look for | Where in Placepoint |
|---|---|---|
| The way in | Address, cadastre number, company name or organisation number | Search |
| What the property is | Area, utilisation, use, owners and tenants in one card | Overview tab in the Property panel |
| Who owns it | Registered owner, ownership chain, the rest of the portfolio | Owners tab, Business |
| Candidates in the area | Zoned housing capacity, old building stock, who is building now | Zoning, Buildings |
| The right tenant | Who is there today, industry, size and tenancy duration | Tenants tab, Business |
| The right person | The company behind the address, and where the decision is made | Owners tab, Tenants tab |
| The list | The candidates that survive the session, and a spreadsheet | Tags, Filter |
You switch the map layers on from Map layer in the left menu. See How to use map layers if you have not done it before.
Three ways into the search
The search field sits at the top left and takes an address, a cadastre number, a company name and an organisation number in the same field. Hits are grouped into Properties, Companies, Buildings and Places, with the count per category in the left column. Tab switches category, the arrow keys select, Enter opens.
Video: search by address, name and cadastre number
The video shows all three ways in: the address Tordenskiolds gate 2 in Oslo, a name search for Frognerseteren limited to Companies, and the cadastre number 1865-55-30-0-0 in Vågan.
Duration: 59 seconds. The full collection is on Videos.
Address
The address search is what you use when you know where you are going. Each property hit shows the gårdsnummer and bruksnummer under the address, so you see straight away whether Ulvenveien 110 and 112 are the same matrikkelenhet or three different ones. Here there are two: 111 is gnr. 131 bnr. 91, and 110 and 112 share bnr. 115.
Cadastre number
If you have the cadastre number from a document or a report, it gives one hit and no doubt. You do not need the festenummer and seksjonsnummer: 0301-131-91 is enough. The Recents category at the bottom holds the properties you have had open recently, and is the fastest way back to something you saw in the previous session.
Company and organisation number
A name search looks in all categories at once, so a short company name pulls in properties that merely look similar. Ulven AS returns properties called Ulven in Løten before the company in Oslo. Select Companies in the left column, or search the organisation number, and the hit is unambiguous. The company search is what turns one find into a portfolio, and it comes back under the ownership chain further down.
Click in the map
If you already have the right place in the map, you click the property directly. The polygon is highlighted, and another click opens the Property panel. Last visited next to the search field does the same as the Recents category in the search.
What the panel answers first
The Overview tab in the Property panel is the card you read before you decide whether the property is worth more time. For Ulvenveien 111, what settles the matter is right there:
| What the panel shows | What it means for a search |
|---|---|
| Mixed use, with Kontor- og adm.bygning across the whole usable floor area | A pure office building, not a composite property |
| Plot total 6,757 m², built-up area 1,496 m², 22.1% of plot | Less than a quarter of the plot is built on |
| Owners: OBOS BBL, 100% | One counterparty, not a co-ownership |
| Ten tenants, 441 employees, average tenancy duration 7 years | The building is in use, not empty |
| Government cases: 362 cases, 10,953 documents | A long municipal history to read before a bid |
The utilisation figure is what makes this plot interesting in a district due for densification. Built-up area against plot area is what the degree of utilisation is measured in, and 22.1% on a plot in the middle of a transformation area is an obvious place to keep calculating. Each row in the panel links to the tab with the details, and Government cases opens the municipality's archive for the property.
The ownership chain, and the rest of the portfolio
The Owners tab shows the owner at the top and the ownership structure level by level below. For Ulvenveien 111 the landowner Ulven AS is listed with 100%, and above that again OBOS Eiendom AS. Expand all opens the whole tree at once. If the registered owner is a single-purpose company, this chain is what tells you who you are actually negotiating with, and who has to say yes.
The next step is the search field again: search the landowner's organisation number, and you get the rest of what that company owns. Ulven AS is listed as owner of several hundred matrikkelenheter in the same streets, and a property company with that kind of concentration in one block is a different conversation from one that owns a single building. The company data comes from Brønnøysundregistrene, the ownership from Kartverket's matrikkel.
If you want to see ownership across the neighbouring plots instead of one at a time, Ownership and Company Structure is the map layer. It colours buildings by what the owner does: utleie av egen fast eiendom (letting of own property), kjøp og salg (buying and selling), borettslag (housing co-operatives), offentlig administrasjon (public administration). A continuous field in the same colour is usually one player, and that is the one you should talk to.
The map layers that turn one plot into a list
If you do not have an address, but an area and a few criteria, you reverse the direction of work: switch on the map layers that show the pattern, and click into whatever stands out. Four layers carry most of the job in a transformation area.
The areas at the top of the page are Housing and area reserve (Oslo) from Oslo kommune, which shows zoned housing capacity in the city, both detailed and area zoning plans. The circles are graded by how many homes are in reserve in each plan, and the areas cover large parts of Hovinbyen. The filter narrows by Adoption date, Floor plan type, Percentage developed, Homes in plan and Homes in reserve, so you can have the layer show only what is zoned and not built. Current plan boundaries and land use purposes sit in Regulatory Plans (Oslo) next to it.
Building age colours the stock by first registration year, from 1700 to today. It is the fastest way to read where an area has stood still: the dark blue fields around Ulven and Alnabru are post-war industry, and that is where the transformation will come. Age also says something about technical condition and what can realistically be demolished.
Commercial buildings divides commercial property into office, industry, retail, warehousing and logistics, food and accommodation. The layer draws both points and areas, so you see where the category sits and how big the footprint is. A belt of warehousing and logistics next to a district due for densification is the candidate list itself.
Developer activity shows work areas from FKB: new builds, extensions, additional storeys, demolition and facade changes, each with its own colour. It answers who is building in the area right now, and what they are allowed to do. A neighbouring plot that has already been through processing tells you what the municipality accepted on height and density, and that is a better starting point than an estimate.
If the search is to be systematic rather than visual, Filter is the tool: you set criteria against the whole matrikkel, watch the hits change as you adjust, and pull them out as a table.
Find the right tenant
If you have vacant space instead of a plot, the search goes the other way: the criteria apply to companies, not matrikkelenheter. The Tenants tab in the Property panel is the reference profile. It shows who is based at the address, with industry, employees and tenancy duration, taken from Brønnøysundregistrene.
For Ulvenveien 111 the list has ten tenants, four of them with employees, 441 in total. The three largest are Nordomatic Norge, Skanlog and Datek Installasjon, with 146, 134 and 133 employees and tenancy durations from 7.9 to 12 years. Average tenancy duration is 7 years, against 4.2 years historically. That is a profile: technical installation and logistics, companies that stay a long time. The column you sort on decides what you see, and Historic tenants next to it shows who has moved out.
The next step is to find more of the same kind. Business has the layers that show which industries dominate within walking distance, among them Retail activity and Growing companies. A rule of thumb for offices is 10 to 15 m² per employee, so the employee count in the list tells you roughly how much space a company needs.
Find the right person to reach
If you are selling something to the property industry, the question is different again: who is at the address, and where is the decision made. Both answers are in the Property panel, in two tabs.
The Tenants tab gives the companies that are actually based there, with organisation number, industry and employees from Brønnøysundregistrene. The Owners tab gives the other side: if the legal owner is a single-purpose company, the ownership chain leads you up to the parent company, and that is where a deal on the whole portfolio is decided. Then search the parent company's organisation number to see how many addresses that conversation really covers.
Keep the list alive
A shortlist that exists only in your head is gone at the next login. Add tag at the top of the Property panel links the property to a named list, and Tags in the left menu collects them: all tagged properties in the map, and the same list as a table.
Video: keep the pipeline alive with tags
The video creates the tag "Til vurdering" (under consideration) on a property, opens the Tags panel, zooms out to all tagged properties and searches its way back to the one.
Duration: 55 seconds. The full collection is on Videos.
If the list is going on to a CRM or a spreadsheet, you export it to Excel from Tags or from Filter. The file has address, matrikkel, area, owner, tenant and last transaction per row. See Export and sharing for the formats and the limits.
Related areas
- Understanding property and context for the detailed lookup on each candidate on the list.
- Feasibility study when the candidate is chosen and the question is what the plot can take.
- Assessing risk for flooding, ground conditions and what is registered against the property.
- Analysing value and potential for valuation and yield before a bid is submitted.
- Managing and monitoring a portfolio for ongoing follow-up of the list you have built.
- How to use map layers if the map layers above are new to you.