Sweden’s housing market is tightly controlled, with rents from the big private and municipal landlords set in negotiations with the Swedish Tenants’ Association, or Hyresgästsförening. Subletting rents – theoretically at least – are supposed to cover the costs of the apartment without making a profit.
So far this year, the hikes agreed with the Tenants’ Association have been well below the headline rate of inflation, meaning rents are falling in Sweden in real terms. The latest statistics on sublets, meanwhile, indicate that, in many areas, rents have been falling even in nominal terms – without being adjusted for inflation.
“In the wake of economic crisis, interest rate hikes and inflation, more and more Swedes are seeing the need to rent out part or all of their property,” explained Fredrik Strömsten, chief executive of Qasa, which runs Blocket’s property listings site, in a report in April.
There had, he said, been an “explosive increase in the number of sublets”.
How much does it cost to rent an apartment in Stockholm directly?
The most recent rental numbers from Statistics Sweden data back to the end of 2022.
These show that while upmarket areas like Östermalm and Södermalm are the most expensive areas to rent in, so-called “first-hand apartments” (apartments rented directly via the municipality’s housing queue) there are only about a third more expensive than much less desirable areas of the city.
These rates, however, give quite a misleading idea of the real cost of living in these parts of the city.
With queues for rental apartments in these areas running to longer than ten years, most foreigners coming to the capital are unlikely to ever get a chance to rent at such rates, and we’ll get to that further down in the article.
Nonetheless, rents across Sweden are rising more slowly than inflation and Stockholm is no exception. According to Hem & Hyra, the news site run by the Tenants’ Association, the big private and municipal landlords proposed hiking rents by an average of 9.04 percent at the start of the year, but by the end of February the Tenants’ Association had managed to bargain this down to 4.22 percent.
So if you’re lucky enough to get to rent an apartment directly from a municipal or private landlord, you can expect to pay about 5 percent more than the numbers in the table above.
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What are rents like outside central Stockholm?
If you decide to live outside central Stockholm, rent can be considerably cheaper, but it can also more expensive if you live in the desirable municipalities such as Täby, which is home to the Danderyd area where many of Stockholm’s richest have their villas.
How much does it cost to sublet an apartment in Stockholm?
As a foreigner coming to Sweden, you are much more likely to end up subletting an apartment, using sites like Blocket or The Local’s own rental platform.
Although Sweden’s rental rules are designed to prevent subletting for profit, in reality you will often find yourself paying a hefty premium.
But according to the most recent statistics from Blocket and Qasa, sublet rents are stable or falling as cash-strapped renters are forced to sublet rooms or their entire apartments.
The number of sublet announcements on their platform for Stockholm was 78.8 percent higher in the first three months of this years than it was in the first three months of 2022.
As you might expect, sublets in Norrmalm, Östermalm and Södermalm are the priciest, going for roughly double what you would pay for directly leasing an apartment in these areas.
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