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IMMIGRATION

How has the pandemic affected migration permits in Sweden?

The coronavirus pandemic had a huge impact on people's ability to move around the world. So what did that mean for people applying for or renewing permits to live in Sweden?

Published: 27 November 2020 12:21 CET
How has the pandemic affected migration permits in Sweden?
Several offices are not accepting in-person visits for certain issues, instead asking applications to get in touch online or by phone. Photo: Marcus Ericsson/TT

Applications for first-time work permits fell during the spring and summer, but rose again in the autumn.

This prompted the Migration Agency to increase its total estimate of work permit applications for the year from 39,000 (predicted in July) to 44,000, which is still around 6,000 less than the agency's estimate in May and around 15,000 fewer than last year.

Of the 39,169 first-time work permit applications submitted in Sweden by the end of October, 70 percent were approved and the average processing time was 130 days. 

A further 32,240 applications were made to extend work permits, of which 89 percent were approved with an average processing time of 95 days.

The processing times have increased by around two thirds for first-time permits, which took an average of 81 days to process in 2019, but the 2019 average processing time for renewals was longer at 104 days.

These figures don't just include international workers, but also any partners or relatives who were included on the same permit (this is typically the case if both partners will move to Sweden and the partner with a job offer will work for at least six months) as well as people on temporary work permits. Out of the total, 18,253 of the applications were from people moving to work for a Swedish company.

“Even if average processing time might differ from month to month this year, it is hard to ascribe it solely due to the spread of corona et cetera. Too many uncertainties can affect the outcome,” said a spokesperson for the Migration Agency when The Local asked how processing time had changed year-on-year.

The press spokesperson also outlined several actions that the agency has taken due to the pandemic. These included urging applicants to use online services, email or telephone rather than visiting offices in person, as well as reducing opening hours, closing children's play areas, and limiting the total number of people accepted at one time in service centres. They said no offices had been closed due to the pandemic.

They also told us that it was not possible to make changes to residence permit criteria to take into account the impact of the pandemic – for example by extending the time people have to apply for a renewal, or giving people on work permits who lost their job due to the pandemic extra time to find a new job. The agency's website notes that the Migration Agency makes its decisions based on Swedish laws which “do not consider any extraordinary events”.

“The Swedish Migration Agency cannot make any changes in regards to residence permit criteria. Only the Swedish Parliament has a mandate to make such decisions, following a proposal from the government,” the agency spokesperson said.

“Visitors with expiring visiting visa are since March able to apply for a guest visa valid for 90 day, if they cannot travel back to their homeland due to travel restrictions.”

By the end of October, 28,550 people had applied for permits to move to a family member or partner in Sweden, and a total of 16,916 such applications were approved. That's a huge drop from the 31,785 people granted a permit for family reunification during 2019.

For first-time permit applications to move to a family member in Sweden, processing time was an average of 297 days in 2020, and for renewals of these permits it was 147 days on average. That's not a significant change from 2019, when the average processing time for first-time permits was 284 days and for renewals 151 days.

As of October, there were 27,232 open cases for family reunification, which means people had applied for a permit to join a family member in Sweden but not yet received a response. And there were 17,417 people waiting for a decision on their first-time work permit application.

As for people applying for Swedish citizenship, there was no change to the expected number of applications during 2020.

Processing time for these applications has also been slow, with figures shared with The Local showing that citizenship applications took an average of 394 days to process in 2020.

A total of 70,410 applications were made, and 65,336 decisions were reached (including applications submitted during this year as well as others in the queue) of which 85 percent were approved.

Has your permit application or renewal been affected by the pandemic, or do you have another question about residence permits in Sweden? Please fill in the form below, or you can contact our editorial team at [email protected].

 

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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.

Published: 8 February 2024 15:25 CET
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 fritidshus, kolonilott, 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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