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Comment by qasdf | Hacker News Reader

> People settled in them for the ethnic support networks, learned the language, got better jobs and moved out in a few years, always replaced by more immigrants.

>Now, people get stuck. Everyone I talked to named the Swedish real estate market as the reason. It’s almost impossible to rent an apartment in Stockholm or other big urban centers, and few can afford to buy one. Swedish housing prices were up 44 percent last year compared with 2012, and they’ve almost tripled since 2000.

To me this is one of the most interesting parts. How can politicians let home prices triple?

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Sweden is a place with large amount of land and a sparse population. Home prices has not tripled overall in Sweden.

Those 23 regions are all districts of cities. When we talk about people moving out of those area, we are talking about people wanting to move from one part of a city to a richer part of the city. It is relevant from a integration perspective, but it is a rather important distinction. If people want jobs and cheap housing all a person need to sacrifice is the willingness to move to any of the smaller towns. A fact very easy verified by looking at the government department for labor which list job offerings. From construction worker, health care worker, to IT professional, I would claim that being flexible in where you want to live is the most important aspect (and the government will usually pay the moving costs).

Yes it has, except maybe were the economy is in serious decline. I am guessing you haven't been to many smaller towns. Smaller cities with jobs, like say Lund are still very expensive. Sweden is just in denial over its complete failure.

https://www.ekonomifakta.se/Fakta/Ekonomi/Hushallens-ekonomi...

I think this is a question that needs to be asked around the world. This is happening everywhere.

Well, interest rates have been very low for a long time, so renting money to buy an apartment was basically free. The politicians couldn't do much about that, but recently they introduced mandatory mortgage repayments. Not sure if it has had much of an impact though.

There are far too few rental apartments available, I guess because economic liberalism has dominated in Sweden in recent decades. Buying an apartment made far more economic sense anyway, If you had the means.

Also, AFAIK, in Sweden you traditionally aren't expected to pay back the principal on your mortgage in any specific amount of time. They have added restrictions in recent years, but I think you can still start making only interest payments once the principal is worth half or less of the loan collateral. This combined with low interest rates would have the effect of letting home prices surge.

I wouldn't say it is tradition. It is just that since housing wasn't just left to the private market for much of the second half of the 20th century property prices were never that high to begin with. Even when prices were inflated, and crashed, in the 90s they were a third of what they are today.

Do politicians set the home prices in Sweden? How does that work?

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