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LIVING IN SWEDEN

UPDATED: How Americans can move to Sweden

Whether you want to move to Sweden for love, work or simply adventure, there are some hurdles to overcome first. Here's a look at the different ways you can move here as a US citizen.

UPDATED: How Americans can move to Sweden
Are you moving for love, work, or just the adventure? Photo: Per Pixel Petersson/imagebank.sweden.se

The descriptions below outline the processes for people without EU citizenship, since EU citizens have the option to move to Sweden without a permit or visa.

Although this article specifically outlines the rules for Americans wishing to move to Sweden, the same rules apply for most other non-EU, non-Nordic citizens wishing to move to the country.

For any permit application, you will need to prove your identity, usually with your passport. You will also, as a general rule, need to apply for your work permit or visa from your home country – meaning you can’t move to Sweden until your application has been approved.

Moving to a partner or family member

You can get a residence permit to move to a family member in Sweden, which most commonly means a partner or spouse or a child aged under 18, but in exceptional circumstances may include other family members. 

You will need documents proving your relationship, which depend based on what kind of relationship it is. For couples, it might include a marriage certificate or copies of rental contracts proving you have previously lived together. If you haven’t previously lived together but plan to do so in Sweden, you must also attend an interview.

The person you are moving to also needs to prove that they can support you, by having suitable accommodation and a large enough salary to support you both. This is the case regardless of any income or assets you as the permit applicant have.

You also pay a fee of 2,000 kronor (1,000 kronor for children under 18) which is refunded if your application is refused. Find out more about permits for moving to a family member here.

How long will it take? As of March 2023, 75 percent of applicants moving to a partner received a decision within 15 months. Factors such as which family member you are moving to, how well you can prove your relationship (including documents showing you have lived together), which country you are from and what your family member’s residence status in Sweden is may all affect the processing time.

Photo: Lina Roos/imagebank.sweden.se

Moving for work

If you are moving to Sweden for work, the crucial thing is that you need a signed job contract before you arrive in Sweden; non-EU citizens cannot move in order to look for work, unless they apply for a three month talent visa, officially known as a “resi­dence permit for highly quali­fied persons to look for work or start a busi­ness”.

More on that visa and how to apply is available here.

Certain jobs are exempt from the work permit requirement, typically shorter, fixed-term work such as au pairs, researchers, and seasonal workers. 

A job contract must offer a salary and conditions that both allow you to support yourself (defined as at least 13,000 kronor per month as of March 2023, although this will almost certainly go up within the next year as a raise to the salary limit has been approved in parliament), as well as being on par with the industry standard. You must also be able to financially support any family members who will be moving to Sweden with you.

Your employer must also commit to providing several kinds of insurance from the day you start working. Make sure your employment meets all the conditions, otherwise you may run into problems when you try to renew your work permit further down the line

For work permits, it is your employer who starts the permit application process, and you should be contacted by the Swedish Migration Agency after this is done. Then, you submit your documents such as a passport, and the passports of any family members who will be joining you in Sweden, and pay the fee, which varies slightly depending on your profession but is roughly 2,000 kronor.

Family members will also get permits to live and work in Sweden for the same length of time as you, if you can prove that you will be able to support them financially while you are in Sweden. Find out more about moving to Sweden for work here.

How long will it take? As of March 2023, 75 percent of employees who applied online received a response on their application within 13 months. Factors such as which industry you will be working in, whether or not the employer is certified with the Migration Agency, and whether or not the application included all the necessary information all affect the processing time.

Moving for studies

If you want to study in Sweden for longer than 90 days, you need a student permit.

To do this, you will need a place on a course of study in Sweden, which means you need to apply and be accepted. Be aware that there are earlier deadlines for international students than for those in Sweden, in order to give you time to get your paperwork sorted.

As well as proof of your place to study, you need to have paid the tuition fees, and have proof that you can support yourself during your studies, as well as proof of health insurance.

You can also apply for permits for any family members who will join you in Sweden while you study, as long as you can provide proof of their identity and that you have sufficient funds to support yourselves. Find out more about moving to Sweden for studies here.

Originally published in November 2020. Updated in March 2023.

Member comments

  1. Americans who consider moving to Sweden should know that anti-Americanism is tolerated and green-lighted, even by the government. It is ironic, given that Sweden is easily the most Americanized country in Europe. It is not pervasive, but it can be pernicious. It is marbled through all sectors of Swedish society and is most prevalent among the over 50s— the people who hold power. In the course of 20 years, I have seen Americans (even those with Swedish citizenship) get attacked physically and verbally; be denied salary and healthcare; have their property sabotaged and even confiscated; and of course suffer the chronic, daily burden of being framed an “ugly American”— because of Trump or BLM or guns or Hollywood or climate politics or capitalism or . . .

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LIVING IN SWEDEN

What you need to know about owning a second home in Sweden

In most countries owning a second home is a luxury reserved for the wealthy, but in Sweden it's very common to have a summer home or 'fritidshus'. Here's what you need to know.

What you need to know about owning a second home in Sweden

What is a fritidshus

In Sweden, second homes are generally either classified as a fritidshus, literally a “free time house”, or a permanenthus or permanentboende.

A fritidshus is defined as “a house which is not set up for all-year-around living”. Rather confusingly, this does not mean that you can’t live all-year-round in a fritidshus, or, indeed, that you can’t use a permanenthus as your summer house. 

The difference comes down to how the two types of property are treated in Sweden’s building code, with fritidshus allowed, among other things, to have lower ceilings, smaller bathrooms, more basic kitchens, worse accessibility for disabled people, a lower standard of insulation. 

If you decide to live permanently in a fritidshus, you do not need to get approval to do so, but the building committee at your local council can, if they learn of what you are doing, demand that the building be changed to meet the requirements of a permanenthus (although this rarely happens).

There is also a subgroup of fritidshuskolonilott, which are houses with a small amount of land which should be used for growing food (although lots of people just use them as attractive gardens). This is different from an odlingslott, which is just an allotment, essentially a kolonilott without the house.

These are usually in designated kolonilott areas close to or in cities, and are not intended for year-round living. In most kolonilott areas, water supply and drainage is cut off outside of the growing season, and you’re not allowed to register them as your permanent address, for example.

Relaxing outside a summer house. Photo: Doris Beling/Imagebank Sweden

How much does a second home cost? 

The average price of a fritidshus fell by about 6 percent in 2023, following a 1 percent fall in 2022, and now lies at about 2.2 million kronor.

But a search on the Hemnet website for fritidshus under 1 million kronor shows that many sell for a lot less, particularly outside the most popular areas. 

As a rule of thumb, anything within an hour’s drive of Stockholm, Gothenburg or Malmö is likely to be more expensive, as is anywhere on the coast (particularly on Gotland), next to a lake, or near one of Sweden’s more popular skiing areas. 

A report from Länsförsäkringar Fastighetsförmedling, out in mid-2023, found that summer houses were cheapest in Kronoberg country (the southern bit of Småland), followed by Örebro, Värmland, Norrbotten and Västernorrland, and most expensive in Gotland, Stockholm County and Halland. 

What’s the point of having one? 

Despite its vast expanses of unspoiled nature, Sweden is very urbanised, with nearly 90 percent of people living in built-up areas and 63 percent in the biggest few cities. It’s much more common to live in an apartment in a city than in the sort of suburban sprawl of houses with their own gardens so common in countries like the UK and US.

This means that most urban Swedes leave any gardening to their summer houses or allotments.

Given the cold, dark winters, that probably makes sense. 

Fritidshus and other second homes are also at the centre of the long Swedish summer break, when people often take three, or even four, weeks off back-to-back. If you don’t have your own fritidshus, you can spend much of the summer visiting people who do. 

What’s the downside? 

Aside from the cost, it’s a lot of work. Owning a fritidshus means weekends spent at out-of-town building supply shops, and brings a whole new list of chores like cleaning the gutters, mowing, trimming hedges, raking leaves and chopping wood.

If you like foreign travel, and have a lot of other passions and hobbies, you may find owning a summer house squeezes them out. 

A summer house in the Stockholm archipelago. Photo: Sara de Basly/Imagebank Sweden

How common is it to have a fritidshus

There are about 607,000 fritidshus in Sweden, and according to Statistics Sweden, about one in three children (35 percent) have access to one.

It most common to have access to a fritidshus in the north of Sweden, with more than half of children having access to one in 51 municipalities north of Dalarna, and it is least common in Skåne, where in some municipalities only 10 percent of children have access to a fritidshus. 

Is it best to have a second home in a fritidsområde or on its own? 

Many municipalities in Sweden have set aside areas, often near a lake or by the sea, specifically for the building of fritidshus, selling off plots, or tomter, on which people can either build a holiday cottage themselves or get a builder to do it.

According to Statitsics Sweden, about a quarter of fritidshus are in such an area, with Stockholm County boasting the most fritidsområde, or holiday home areas, followed by Västra Götaland (near Gothenburg) and Skåne (near Malmö and Helsingborg). 

If you are building your own summer house, the advantage of doing so in a fritidsområde is that electricity, water and sewage has normally already been run along the edge of the plot, making these services cheap and easy to connect. 

If you want to get a summer house near the coast or a lake, it is also cheaper if you buy one in a fritidsområde. 

On the downside, they can feel a little like living in a housing estate, you have to be careful not to make too much noise, and can end up getting complaints from the local neighbourhood committee if you don’t maintain your property in the way they expect. 

As many fritidsområde were set up the 1960s and 1970s, with a lot of the houses then built by enthusiastic amateurs, they can also be in desrepair and have structural problems. 

The plots that have yet to be built on, meanwhile, are often the worst, for instance with ground that is damp or prone to flooding. 

Renting out your second home

One of the advantages of your second home being classed as a fritidshus is that – so long as you’re only renting it out short-term — you are not covered by Sweden’s strict rental law or hyreslagen.

This means whatever rent you agree with the tenant is valid, there is no requirement to ask for a “reasonable” rent, and tenants cannot contest the rent with the regional rent tribunal.  

Airbnb makes renting out your fritidshus extremely easy and on the other side makes it a lot cheaper and easier to rent a summer house for three weeks in the summer than to own one all year around.  

If you earn more than 40,000 kronor in a year from renting out your fritidshus, though, you are required to declare it to the Swedish Tax Agency. 

You can then subtract a 40,000 kronor ‘standard deduction’ from your rental revenue and a further 20 percent deduction for rental income, before it gets taxed. See the guide from the Swedish Tax Agency here

This means if you receive 60,000 kronor in rent, you subtract first 40,000 kronor, then 20 percent of the 60,000 kronor, which comes to 12,000 kronor.

This leaves you with 8,000 kronor to be taxed as capital income at 30 percent, leaving just 2,400 kronor in tax due. 

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