“Households are cautiously optimistic about the developments on the housing market. It is somewhat surprising considering all the layoffs in recent months. But that could be because these redundancies are very recent and it might not have registered with households yet,” said SEB analyst Gunilla Nyström to news agency TT.

42 percent of Swedish households said that they think prices will rise within the next year. A month ago the corresponding figure was 38 percent. 27 percent believe in falling prices, a figure matching that of of last month.

The poll also showed that households believe that the Riksbank’s benchmark interest rate would remain unchanged at 1.25 percent in a year’s time.

While Nyström believes Sweden will see a rise in redundancies in the next few months, this may not necessarily lead to a more negative outlook in the next poll. Swedish households aren’t counting on a cut in rates over the next year, whereas SEB believes there’ll be at least two.

There are differences in outlook between the different regions. In Skåne county, where households have long had a negative outlook on the housing markets, many are now starting to believe in rising prices. At the same time, optimism is receding somewhat in Stockholm, where people had been expecting better times for quite a while.

“You shouldn’t read too much into it, but it does seem as both these extremes are approaching the country’s average outlook,” Nyström said to TT.

TT/The Local/rm

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