Is that much worse than Silicon Valley (legitimately curious, I've never looked into the housing situation in Stockholm)? 1brs go for nearly $3k (if not more) in many of the more populated parts of the peninsula and SF.
Median rent for a 1-bedroom in SF hit $3600 in October -> http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2015/10/09/the_median_rent_for...
Stockholm is piss dark and cold 8 month a year, in Silicon Valley not so much right? All the big boys are in SV and you earn more and pay less in taxes. You also get other perks from living in the USA.
So you are a talented guy, Stockholm or SV? The choice is obvious, SV. So I don't see the point in trying to fight for a place to stay in Stockholm when you can go somewhere else better.
Not only that, just the last 5 years have done much harm to the housing in Stockholm due to mass immigration and now immigration peaks at 2000 people per day so expect it to get even worse.
So you have to buy. Which is very expensive. Not sure how it compares to SF very expensive.
For some reason the swedes think it's a good idea to have insanely long mortgage terms, if they don't just pay interest. Prices in Stockholm proper is around $950 per square feet, which I guess is comparable to SF [0].
[0] http://www.maklarstatistik.se/ [0] https://www.google.com.mt/search?q=86304+sek+per+square+mete... [0] http://my.paragon-re.com/Docs/General/SixtyFortyImages/Avg-D...