SHARE
COPY LINK

PROPERTY

Homes sell in record time in Sweden

Never before have homes in Sweden been on sale for such a short period of time. And it's no longer the villas with home offices that are flavour of the month, buyers are now favouring town apartments once again.

A view of buildings in Stockholm's old city.
A view of buildings in Stockholm's old city. People are most interested in buying centrally located apartments again now. AFP PHOTO / JONATHAN NACKSTRAND
In January, it took an average of 14 days to sell an apartment, while the equivalent for villas was 18 days. This is, on average, one day less compared to the same month last year, Swedish news agency TT reported.

This is the fastest time recorded since 2014, when Swedish property portal Hemnet began measuring the length of time it took to sell a property. Back then, a villa that was put up for sale in January could have been on the market for a month before it was sold.

Properties selling one day faster than a year ago may seem like a marginal difference, but it can be seen as an indicator of how the rest of the year will turn out.

“January is normally a month when the market is starting up, and it usually gets faster in spring,” said Erik Holmberg, an analyst at Hemnet.

Even if new homes come on to the market, the shorter sales time keeps supply down, creating a favourable situation for sellers but a tougher one for buyers.

“We have high demand in relation to the supply. There will be many interested parties per home for sale…As a buyer, you have to be a little more on your toes to keep up,” said Holmberg.

For the situation to change, there would have to be a slowdown in demand or a sharp increase in the amount of homes coming on the market, he explained.

Focus on apartments
During the height of the pandemic, people were looking to buy houses and many sought refuge outside of towns and cities where space was more limited and Covid-19 case numbers were typically higher.

“Many people spent more time at home. You worked at home and it was more difficult to travel abroad. This increased the demand for living space in general and for villas in particular,” said Holmberg.

But last autumn, buyers’ interest shifted back to apartments.

“When [Covid] restrictions were removed, having a home office became less important, we got a more normal market where the pressure is highest on apartments in central locations,” the analyst said.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.
For members

POLITICS IN SWEDEN

Politics in Sweden: What’s in the Social Democrats’ plan to eradicate Sweden’s ‘vulnerable areas’?

The Social Democrats have given a sneak preview of their plan to eradicate Sweden's so-called 'vulnerable areas', where extreme segregation is combined with severe crime problems. Would it make a difference?

Politics in Sweden: What's in the Social Democrats' plan to eradicate Sweden's 'vulnerable areas'?

With “strategic demolitions” in the most segregated and crime-ridden housing areas, a ban on people on benefits moving into them, and a limit on the share of rental housing in such areas, the plan sketched out in an opinion piece in the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper on Sunday is the boldest new policy proposal the Social Democrats have made in years. 

It’s basically a sanitised version of the “ghetto plan” launched in Denmark back in 2018. 

And judging by the reaction – with right-wing commentators decrying what they call tvångsblandning (forced mixing) and bussning (using buses to swap pupils between areas) and left-wing ones decrying the demolition plans and proposals to let educated people jump rental queues, it promises to be almost as controversial. 

But what’s the alternative, Lawen Redar, the Social Democrat MP who led the working group on segregation, asked Swedish public broadcaster SVT on Sunday. 

“Should we just leave the situation like it is today?” she said of Sweden’s 59 problem housing areas, in some of which 80 percent or more have an immigrant background. “I am extremely frustrated over this. Something must be done.” 

What are the Social Democrats proposing? 

Redar and her three colleagues made 11 proposals in their article: 

1. A national list of “vulnerable areas” with a set of targets to promote: the physical reconstruction of the areas to combat segregation and promote integration; a better mix in the population; an increase in the use of Swedish language in welfare services; bold moves to increase the amount of people in work; and an increased police presence to fight criminality.

2. Central government to hold so-called “Sweden negotiations” with municipalities to jointly fund physical improvement of the areas, by new building, densification, strategic demolitions, and new traffic and public transport solutions. 

3. A limit to the proportion of rental apartments in vulnerable areas. Areas with high levels of rental apartments would be required to take action to increase the share of private and cooperative housing. 

4. Government to give credit guarantees to companies building detached, semi-detached, and terraced houses in vulnerable areas.

5. Government funds for renovation and upgrading of “Million Programme” areas. 

6. Minimum income for those moving to vulnerable areas. Landlords would be banned from renting out property in vulnerable areas to anyone who has lived off benefits in the last six months. 

7. People with university degrees would be given priority in the queue for rental apartments in vulnerable areas.

8. New regulations to prevent landlords setting high income requirements for rental properties outside vulnerable areas. 

9. Government to give credit guarantees and other forms of investment support to companies building affordable rental apartments outside vulnerable areas. 

10. An inquiry into how to increase the share of rental properties owned by non-profit and public housing companies outside vulnerable areas 

11. An inquiry into how to give municipalities first right to bidding on socially important and strategic land. 

What’s the problem? 

Although Sweden’s recent epidemic of gang shootings has been blamed by many on the country’s extreme housing segregation, Redar and her colleagues said that this was far from the only problem. 

Fully 40 percent of adults between the ages of 20-64 in Sweden’s 59 “vulnerable areas” cannot support themselves through their work, three out of 10 children in such areas leave secondary school without the grades needed to go to upper secondary school or gymnasium.

Part of Sweden’s segregation problem, as Lawar recognised, is built into the architecture. The Social Democrats’ “Million Homes programme”, enacted between the mid 1960s and the mid-1970s, may have rescued people from slum conditions, but it also created a series of isolated urban communities on the outskirts of Sweden’s cities, often cut off from the rest of towns and cities by motorway ring-roads. 

Although they were initially built for working-class ethnic Swedes, as the rate of immigration to Sweden picked up in the 1980s,1990s and early 2000s, Swedes became outnumbered as part of so-called “white flight”.  

Fully 80 percent of those living in the so called “especially vulnerable areas” now have a foreign background, a share that rises to above 90 percent in five of the most segregated districts. 

“We believe that there is no more important task for Sweden than breaking segregation and fighting the class society. No task is more urgent,” Redar and her colleagues wrote in their article.

“The fact that children and young people are growing up in this cemented inequality is nothing less than a social failure which brings shame to our country. It must come to an end.”  

What are opponents saying about it? 

Fredrik Kopsch from the right-wing Timbro thinktank complained that efforts to increase the number of people with immigrant backgrounds in middle class and rich areas of Swedish cities would not work. 

“The income requirement [for rental apartments] will be reduced through the law, and state subsidies will create cheap rental apartmments in socio-economically strong areas. It is detached from reality to think that this will help deprived people,” he wrote in an article in Svenska Dagbladet.  

Will it help the Social Democrats? 

The Social Democrats were criticised for lacking concrete policy proposals, both in the run-up to the 2022 general election and in their first year and a half in opposition. 

With this proposal, together with a proposal to make kindergarten compulsory for children over three years old, that has changed. 

If the rest of the 11 policy working groups set to present their conclusions at the party’s congress in August come up with similarly detailed proposals, the party will be overflowing with new ideas. 

While this will finally give its politicians something to say for themselves, it will also make them easier to attack. 

SHOW COMMENTS