Vacancies during a housing crisis : A study of vacancies in municipal housing in Sweden

Sammanfattning

The Swedish housing market is in a weird situation, on the one hand there is an ongoing housing crisis with a large shortage of available housing and on the other there are an increasing number of vacancies. Both of these statements are often talked about on a national level. This paper offers a more detailed view of the current Swedish housing market. How the history of the Swedish housing market has led up to this and what factors are coinciding with high vacancies. This paper has used previous research on similar topics to create a basis for its research. A cluster analysis made with GIS that shows clusters of low vacancies around Stockholm, Göteborg and Malmö, alongside a linear regressional analysis of different variables is presented in the paper. The result is that vacancies have had a strong connection to demographical factors such as depopulation, but these factors have declined in relevance and today structural components of the Swedish housing market, such as rent control, play a larger role.