Over the same period of time, the population in the largest towns have been growing at the expense of rural municipalities. The Norwegian housing market was deregulated through the 1980 s and thus has become more sensi- tive to development in macroeconomic factors like inte- rest rates and unemployment. This was a clear experi- ence during the late 1980s and through the 1990s when the economy first boomed with rising building costs and house prices, then almost collapsed with a rapid increase in real interest rates and an unemployment rate higher than for more than fifty years. Housing construction made a bottom of 15 000 starts in 1993 and house prices reached.
