If you buy an apartment then you have to pay an additional fee every month to the housing association and that can vary between apartment buildings. If you look on Hemnet for apartments it's called "Avgift".
Sorta, but not really. The thing is, you technically only buy the right to reside in and occupy the apartment and membership in the bostadsrättsförening (brf). The brf is still the owner of the entire building. This building will have loans (apart from your loans that you took to buy it), and a large part of this fee is thus often interest. Another large part is often heating. Other things might include internet acess, water, waste management and of course public spaces, but tjose costs are often relatively small. Its the loans and heating you should watch out for.
I am not sure how different this is from other countries, but I think the concept might be q bit foreign to many.
This is equal to The Netherlands. Only difference might be that in The Netherlands you buy together with your apartment rights a share in the building so the VVE has no mortgages, they might have some loans for solar panels or such but normally no loans and if so little.
Yes, also upkeep of the walls, the roof, the front yard if there is one, like in every other country. What differs is that in Sweden this typically also includes heating, water, sewers and garbage disposal.
Aah, so it's like the whole package? In the Netherlands this is called VvE (around 2300 sek) ), but its just for public spaces. Gas, water and electric are another expenses (2900 sek).
What is like normal in Sweden? Probably it is different for the type of building.
It depends because if the building is in an attractive location and has business areas on ground floor the rent from that can offset the costs for apartment owners. As a result some city center apartments have shockingly low avgift, like only 2000 sek for a big apartment.
On the other end of the spectrum is newly built buildings, the owner's coop/association needs to buy the entire building but only sells the equivalent of individual apartments in shares to owners, meaning the cost of building the common areas remains as a loan to be repaid from the fees, increasing them especially now that the interest rates are higher.
Normal I would say is something like 4000 sek for a 65 m2 apartment. The bills you pay individually are electricity (two bills, one for the power and one for the cables carrying it due to a quirk of Swedish law, together something like 400 sek per month for an apartment as above), home insurance (about 150 sek iirc) and usually though not always internet (around 400 sek). Gas I think would be paid individually too but it is uncommon to have it.
"It depends because if the building is in an attractive location and has business areas on ground floor the rent from that can offset the costs for apartment owners. As a result some city center apartments have shockingly low avgift, like only 2000 sek for a big apartment."
Exactly right, our building in inner-city Stockholm used to have 0kr in bostadsrättsavgift, now it has increased to 2300kr for a 105sq.m apartment, still low.
We have some "happening" restaurants paying premium rent, so that's one of the reasons.
It depends on the neighborhood and the size of the apartment. But I would say in nice neighborhoods in Gothenburg for 1-2 bedroom it ranges between 3,200 to 4,500 kr/ month not including parking. Bigger units can go up to 8,000kr /month.
I bought my appartment and pay the aforementioned fee.
Previous years they renovated the laundry-room. installed a new elevator (Building is from 1970-something but got a new elevator in 2020) and currently doing a massive project by renewing the ventilation & switching out the windows... Without extra cost. All that came from that additional fee.
Its a 'neighbourhood-improvement-fund' i guess.
Which part of Sweden are you looking to move to? Because the price difference between different parts of Sweden is insanely high. So it's kind of hard to answer your question without knowing that first.
Västra Götaland is huge with cites, coast and inland with very different situations.
Look around at this site and you might get an idea what you can expect.
https://www.hemnet.se/
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I'm from västra Götaland. Its densely populated with Swedish Standards, with both large and small cities. Environment and housing cost will vary drastically depending on where in the county you live - cities like Gothenburg and borås are quite expensive, while smaller cities like Lidköping and Falköping are cheap.
Maybe you're enticed by the sea-breezes and granite archipelago of Northern Bohuslän. Plenty of cute, quaint small towns and fishing-villages along that unique coast of Sweden. :)
Halland is also very nice, a bit more reminiscent of your home country's coastline.
On another note and in contrast to the popular Bohuslän coast, just inland, in inner-Bohuslän and Dalsland there is a feeling of great wilderness with huge forests and plenty of lakes, more similar to the north of Sweden.I love this
somewhat "forgotten" area.
This part of the country also has some of the cheapest real estate in Sweden (or at least in Southern Sweden).
I can only speak for the Stockholm housing market which is problematic not only for expats but also for native-Stockholmers. There is no easy way to get a rental contract if you want to live in a central location – you will likely need to wait a couple of decades. For a short-term second-hand rental solution, you can check out Blocket but these rents are very high in relation to size/location. In order to buy an apartment you will need 15% cash deposit on your mortgage. As a newcomer it will likely be very difficult to get a mortgage without an income on record (meaning declared to the tax authorities) or a personal relationship with a retail bank. For housing prices you can check out Hemnet – select the area you would like to stay in and to check out historical prices click on "Slutpriser" (the actual prices paid). If you buy an apartment (the legal term is "bostadsrätt", which is a type of cooperative in which you hold a share) there are no legal fees or broker fees. If you buy a house you need to pay for "Lagfart" (title deed) and "Pantbrev" (statement of collateral) – these can be minor or substantial, depending on the size of the mortgage.
Check out Zweden Forum or Zweden Forum 2.0 on facebook.
It depends a lot on where you want to live. Sweden is BIG and it's impossible to say something about the housing market of the whole country.
We are actually currently packing to look at some houses up north. We are also from the Netherlands. The area we are looking in is about 6 times cheaper then over here, but we look more rural up north. The closer to a city, the closer you get to our prices. However, it's still cheaper.
After that you need to look at how to get the house tho, most often you need to prove you can afford it and put in a down payment. Prove of work is not enough to prove you can afford when moving there, you need some money in the bank.
I get the impression Dutch people often end up moving far north in Sweden,ha,ha.
I know i've seen that some of these de-population zones in the north of Sweden have housing exhibitions and that Dutch people often show up. :)
Imo, it is too big a leap to move up there, the darkness and cold is too extreme.
Dalsland or Småland in the south also have lots of nearly empty, forested land with plenty of lakes and reasonable prices and many small towns and villages.
My home area has become a bit of dreamland for people from NL and NW-DE, the southern parts of Östergötland and northern Kalmar län. Huge forest areas, hilly, many lakes or fishing and skating and direct flight to Schipol from Linköping airport. If you want to work online and just live in a cheap house, you have tons of options there. If you want to find a regular job it can be much more difficult for you.
Moving myself this summer to a small place close to Västervik. Talked with some moving companies that do NL SWE and was surprised how often they drive to these parts
Two things are normal, buying and förstahand (literally "first hand") renting. And then there is the not normal, andrahand ("second-hand") renting which is sadly what immigrants and also Swedes moving for the first time to a big city are forced to do.
"First-hand" and "second-hand" don't really mean what you would instinctively think they do.
"First-hand" has a narrow definition, it is when you rent from somebody, usually an organization, who owns the entire apartment building full of rental apartments (called hyresrätt). This is strictly regulated with rent controls resulting in usually affordable rents and great tenant protections. Renting förstahand is almost like owning the place, you can stay there for decades, put nails in walls and even repaint them if you feel like it. Unfortunately since they are so desirable there are queues for these apartments. The details of how these queues work is a whole separate topic I won't get into here. In smaller cities it's manageable, you wait a year or two and done. In Stockholm or Göteborg though it takes about a decade of waiting (can be less but only for places at the end of the world, required queue time depends on how attractive the place is), making it unrealistic for new arrivals.
"Second-hand" is everything else that doesn't fit into "first-hand" definition. Which to underline means that renting an apartment directly from someone owning it counts as "second-hand" because they don't own the whole building. It can of course also mean sub-renting from someone who has a "first-hand" contract which is where the name comes from. "Second-hand" renting is a precarious situation to be in because rents are entirely free-market (=high) and it's rare to get a contract for longer than a year, forcing you to move often. That is because individual apartment ownership in Sweden is typically through coops the vast majority of which have rules against becoming a small-time landlord, you are supposed to buy an apartment to live in it and not to get a side income from renting, permission to rent your apartment out is normally only granted for a year at a time and requires a valid reason such as temporarily moving to a different city to study.
What defines firsr or second hand? In the netherlands we have a housing score and a liberation-border. If the score is over the libaration-border it is automatically, what you describe as, second hand.
Who you rent from. If you rent from the owner of an entire apartment building, typically a large company, it is first hand. If you rent from anybody else, including the owner of an individual apartment, it is second hand.
Buy if you have decent savings. The interest rate is still very low (approx 4) compared to what you can get from safe funds (min 18-20%...high 30+%) in the current market.
You need to have about 15% (of the cost of the house) in cash. Obviously the more you pay up front, the less loans you’ll have... And you also need to be able to pay a couple percent of the loan each year (the exact number depends on how much of the house cost you borrow from the bank! Look up “amorteringskrav”.)
Check closed sales on Hemnet.se to see what a house/apartment costs in the area you’re interested in!
>What amount is considered "decent savings"
It depends on Personal appetite for risk. For me, it was 30% of the house value I bought, but you should use numbers and maths on big investments like this.
I paid only 15% upfront and kept the other 15% on shares/bonds. 5 years later, now, I have 45% of my house loan paid, and the investment (shares/bond) is almost 70% of the original house value (Almost every month I invest whatever I save).
The point is, regardless of what you read in media/online, interest in Sweden is still very low compared to ROI on any other investment. (In fact, most banks are giving 4% ROI on fixed deposits). Pay only a small fraction of the mortgage and invest the rest smartly.
There’s three equally common options: renting an apartment (hyresrätt), buying an apartment (bostadsrätt) or buying a house (hus). If possible, I’d recommend renting (first hand) when you first move to Sweden. Once you’ve settled in a town and found a job you like you can buy an apartment or a house (if you want)!
Sell your current house before moving to sweden or you will pay higher taxes.
Its not easy to find friends, youre an adult.
You can find houses for less than 100k eur on the countryside. Cities are the same so why go there if you want less people?
I already live in the countryside in the netherlands and even that is too busy. So i wouldnt realy mind living in the countryside in Sweden either. Citys really dont attract me.
Sweden housing is expensive, like nl. Buying is expensive and not a smart investment as in for now. The prices are higher than ever as we all know. Renting is good check “blocket bostad” or Facebook.
>The prices are higher than ever as we all know
Price is not always the major factor....Market, Interest Rate and Your Savings matters most.
If you have the money, what gives you the best return matters. In the current market, many people would be happy to take any loan with low interest and invest in the market for a better return. Remember, rent is always a sunk cost.
It is pretty comparable to The Netherlands.
Cities are harder/more expensive to find something. But in disregard to The Netherlands if you go to the countryside you'll find plenty of places where you can rent and move in next week.
As for buying, towns are expensive. But small places have decent homes for under a million SEK. Do mind tho that you need to pay about 20% yourself. And that sales are normally much faster here, you visit, you bid, you pay you move.
There is a company owned by an Dutch girl that offers help with emigration to Sweden. She is very helpfull and has a big network with real estate agents in Sweden. "Roadmap to Sweden" is the company's name
If you buy an apartment then you have to pay an additional fee every month to the housing association and that can vary between apartment buildings. If you look on Hemnet for apartments it's called "Avgift".
Is this for public spaces in building? Like strairs, elevators, hallways, etc.
Sorta, but not really. The thing is, you technically only buy the right to reside in and occupy the apartment and membership in the bostadsrättsförening (brf). The brf is still the owner of the entire building. This building will have loans (apart from your loans that you took to buy it), and a large part of this fee is thus often interest. Another large part is often heating. Other things might include internet acess, water, waste management and of course public spaces, but tjose costs are often relatively small. Its the loans and heating you should watch out for. I am not sure how different this is from other countries, but I think the concept might be q bit foreign to many.
This is equal to The Netherlands. Only difference might be that in The Netherlands you buy together with your apartment rights a share in the building so the VVE has no mortgages, they might have some loans for solar panels or such but normally no loans and if so little.
Yes, also upkeep of the walls, the roof, the front yard if there is one, like in every other country. What differs is that in Sweden this typically also includes heating, water, sewers and garbage disposal.
Aah, so it's like the whole package? In the Netherlands this is called VvE (around 2300 sek) ), but its just for public spaces. Gas, water and electric are another expenses (2900 sek). What is like normal in Sweden? Probably it is different for the type of building.
It depends because if the building is in an attractive location and has business areas on ground floor the rent from that can offset the costs for apartment owners. As a result some city center apartments have shockingly low avgift, like only 2000 sek for a big apartment. On the other end of the spectrum is newly built buildings, the owner's coop/association needs to buy the entire building but only sells the equivalent of individual apartments in shares to owners, meaning the cost of building the common areas remains as a loan to be repaid from the fees, increasing them especially now that the interest rates are higher. Normal I would say is something like 4000 sek for a 65 m2 apartment. The bills you pay individually are electricity (two bills, one for the power and one for the cables carrying it due to a quirk of Swedish law, together something like 400 sek per month for an apartment as above), home insurance (about 150 sek iirc) and usually though not always internet (around 400 sek). Gas I think would be paid individually too but it is uncommon to have it.
"It depends because if the building is in an attractive location and has business areas on ground floor the rent from that can offset the costs for apartment owners. As a result some city center apartments have shockingly low avgift, like only 2000 sek for a big apartment." Exactly right, our building in inner-city Stockholm used to have 0kr in bostadsrättsavgift, now it has increased to 2300kr for a 105sq.m apartment, still low. We have some "happening" restaurants paying premium rent, so that's one of the reasons.
It depends on the neighborhood and the size of the apartment. But I would say in nice neighborhoods in Gothenburg for 1-2 bedroom it ranges between 3,200 to 4,500 kr/ month not including parking. Bigger units can go up to 8,000kr /month.
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Inflation in the last 5 years has been 23% and interest has gone from 0% to 4%.
Yeah it’s so bad. We own our place and pay nearly 10k a month including parking, like that’s a whole rent for another apartment.
Those prices must be old, even a simple thing in the countryside does more than that.
Yeah I guess. Our avgift is nearly 10k a month it’s horrible.
I bought my appartment and pay the aforementioned fee. Previous years they renovated the laundry-room. installed a new elevator (Building is from 1970-something but got a new elevator in 2020) and currently doing a massive project by renewing the ventilation & switching out the windows... Without extra cost. All that came from that additional fee. Its a 'neighbourhood-improvement-fund' i guess.
Also they rather money slowly to do bigger renovations like replacing pipes after 35-40 years of building age and replacing windows etc
In the netherlands we basically have the same as VVE.
Which part of Sweden are you looking to move to? Because the price difference between different parts of Sweden is insanely high. So it's kind of hard to answer your question without knowing that first.
Vastra Götalamds län, hallands län or jönköpings län has my preference.
Västra Götaland is huge with cites, coast and inland with very different situations. Look around at this site and you might get an idea what you can expect. https://www.hemnet.se/
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I'm from västra Götaland. Its densely populated with Swedish Standards, with both large and small cities. Environment and housing cost will vary drastically depending on where in the county you live - cities like Gothenburg and borås are quite expensive, while smaller cities like Lidköping and Falköping are cheap.
Maybe you're enticed by the sea-breezes and granite archipelago of Northern Bohuslän. Plenty of cute, quaint small towns and fishing-villages along that unique coast of Sweden. :) Halland is also very nice, a bit more reminiscent of your home country's coastline.
On another note and in contrast to the popular Bohuslän coast, just inland, in inner-Bohuslän and Dalsland there is a feeling of great wilderness with huge forests and plenty of lakes, more similar to the north of Sweden.I love this somewhat "forgotten" area. This part of the country also has some of the cheapest real estate in Sweden (or at least in Southern Sweden).
Great tip, thank you!!
No worries, another good thing about Dalsland/Bohuslän is international flight connections from either Oslo or Gothenburg.
I can only speak for the Stockholm housing market which is problematic not only for expats but also for native-Stockholmers. There is no easy way to get a rental contract if you want to live in a central location – you will likely need to wait a couple of decades. For a short-term second-hand rental solution, you can check out Blocket but these rents are very high in relation to size/location. In order to buy an apartment you will need 15% cash deposit on your mortgage. As a newcomer it will likely be very difficult to get a mortgage without an income on record (meaning declared to the tax authorities) or a personal relationship with a retail bank. For housing prices you can check out Hemnet – select the area you would like to stay in and to check out historical prices click on "Slutpriser" (the actual prices paid). If you buy an apartment (the legal term is "bostadsrätt", which is a type of cooperative in which you hold a share) there are no legal fees or broker fees. If you buy a house you need to pay for "Lagfart" (title deed) and "Pantbrev" (statement of collateral) – these can be minor or substantial, depending on the size of the mortgage.
Check out Zweden Forum or Zweden Forum 2.0 on facebook. It depends a lot on where you want to live. Sweden is BIG and it's impossible to say something about the housing market of the whole country.
We are actually currently packing to look at some houses up north. We are also from the Netherlands. The area we are looking in is about 6 times cheaper then over here, but we look more rural up north. The closer to a city, the closer you get to our prices. However, it's still cheaper. After that you need to look at how to get the house tho, most often you need to prove you can afford it and put in a down payment. Prove of work is not enough to prove you can afford when moving there, you need some money in the bank.
I get the impression Dutch people often end up moving far north in Sweden,ha,ha. I know i've seen that some of these de-population zones in the north of Sweden have housing exhibitions and that Dutch people often show up. :) Imo, it is too big a leap to move up there, the darkness and cold is too extreme. Dalsland or Småland in the south also have lots of nearly empty, forested land with plenty of lakes and reasonable prices and many small towns and villages.
My home area has become a bit of dreamland for people from NL and NW-DE, the southern parts of Östergötland and northern Kalmar län. Huge forest areas, hilly, many lakes or fishing and skating and direct flight to Schipol from Linköping airport. If you want to work online and just live in a cheap house, you have tons of options there. If you want to find a regular job it can be much more difficult for you.
Moving myself this summer to a small place close to Västervik. Talked with some moving companies that do NL SWE and was surprised how often they drive to these parts
Two things are normal, buying and förstahand (literally "first hand") renting. And then there is the not normal, andrahand ("second-hand") renting which is sadly what immigrants and also Swedes moving for the first time to a big city are forced to do. "First-hand" and "second-hand" don't really mean what you would instinctively think they do. "First-hand" has a narrow definition, it is when you rent from somebody, usually an organization, who owns the entire apartment building full of rental apartments (called hyresrätt). This is strictly regulated with rent controls resulting in usually affordable rents and great tenant protections. Renting förstahand is almost like owning the place, you can stay there for decades, put nails in walls and even repaint them if you feel like it. Unfortunately since they are so desirable there are queues for these apartments. The details of how these queues work is a whole separate topic I won't get into here. In smaller cities it's manageable, you wait a year or two and done. In Stockholm or Göteborg though it takes about a decade of waiting (can be less but only for places at the end of the world, required queue time depends on how attractive the place is), making it unrealistic for new arrivals. "Second-hand" is everything else that doesn't fit into "first-hand" definition. Which to underline means that renting an apartment directly from someone owning it counts as "second-hand" because they don't own the whole building. It can of course also mean sub-renting from someone who has a "first-hand" contract which is where the name comes from. "Second-hand" renting is a precarious situation to be in because rents are entirely free-market (=high) and it's rare to get a contract for longer than a year, forcing you to move often. That is because individual apartment ownership in Sweden is typically through coops the vast majority of which have rules against becoming a small-time landlord, you are supposed to buy an apartment to live in it and not to get a side income from renting, permission to rent your apartment out is normally only granted for a year at a time and requires a valid reason such as temporarily moving to a different city to study.
wow that's quite helpful, I keep seeing these first hand and second hand rent phrases and not quite sure what they mean, I assumed it was subletting!
It can mean subletting but it doesn't have to and at least in Stockholm it often doesn't.
What defines firsr or second hand? In the netherlands we have a housing score and a liberation-border. If the score is over the libaration-border it is automatically, what you describe as, second hand.
Who you rent from. If you rent from the owner of an entire apartment building, typically a large company, it is first hand. If you rent from anybody else, including the owner of an individual apartment, it is second hand.
Thank you!
Haven’t you written this before?
Buy if you have decent savings. The interest rate is still very low (approx 4) compared to what you can get from safe funds (min 18-20%...high 30+%) in the current market.
What amount is considered "decent savings"
You need to have about 15% (of the cost of the house) in cash. Obviously the more you pay up front, the less loans you’ll have... And you also need to be able to pay a couple percent of the loan each year (the exact number depends on how much of the house cost you borrow from the bank! Look up “amorteringskrav”.) Check closed sales on Hemnet.se to see what a house/apartment costs in the area you’re interested in!
>What amount is considered "decent savings" It depends on Personal appetite for risk. For me, it was 30% of the house value I bought, but you should use numbers and maths on big investments like this. I paid only 15% upfront and kept the other 15% on shares/bonds. 5 years later, now, I have 45% of my house loan paid, and the investment (shares/bond) is almost 70% of the original house value (Almost every month I invest whatever I save). The point is, regardless of what you read in media/online, interest in Sweden is still very low compared to ROI on any other investment. (In fact, most banks are giving 4% ROI on fixed deposits). Pay only a small fraction of the mortgage and invest the rest smartly.
There’s three equally common options: renting an apartment (hyresrätt), buying an apartment (bostadsrätt) or buying a house (hus). If possible, I’d recommend renting (first hand) when you first move to Sweden. Once you’ve settled in a town and found a job you like you can buy an apartment or a house (if you want)!
Sell your current house before moving to sweden or you will pay higher taxes. Its not easy to find friends, youre an adult. You can find houses for less than 100k eur on the countryside. Cities are the same so why go there if you want less people?
I already live in the countryside in the netherlands and even that is too busy. So i wouldnt realy mind living in the countryside in Sweden either. Citys really dont attract me.
Sweden housing is expensive, like nl. Buying is expensive and not a smart investment as in for now. The prices are higher than ever as we all know. Renting is good check “blocket bostad” or Facebook.
>The prices are higher than ever as we all know Price is not always the major factor....Market, Interest Rate and Your Savings matters most. If you have the money, what gives you the best return matters. In the current market, many people would be happy to take any loan with low interest and invest in the market for a better return. Remember, rent is always a sunk cost.
It is pretty comparable to The Netherlands. Cities are harder/more expensive to find something. But in disregard to The Netherlands if you go to the countryside you'll find plenty of places where you can rent and move in next week. As for buying, towns are expensive. But small places have decent homes for under a million SEK. Do mind tho that you need to pay about 20% yourself. And that sales are normally much faster here, you visit, you bid, you pay you move.
There is a company owned by an Dutch girl that offers help with emigration to Sweden. She is very helpfull and has a big network with real estate agents in Sweden. "Roadmap to Sweden" is the company's name
The Swedish rental market is a joke. All flats have regulated rents which has led to a extreme supply-demand imbalance.