Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK
For members

PROPERTY

For sale: New record as flood of apartments hits the market in Sweden

A flood of new homes are being listed as up for sale in Sweden as sellers and buyers eagerly hope for an imminent interest rate cut.

Published: 6 May 2024 06:55 CEST
Updated: 6 May 2024 10:17 CEST
an apartment listed for sale in Sweden
Sweden's central bank is expected to lower the interest rate this month or next. Photo: Janerik Henriksson/TT

A record number of apartments were available on Sweden’s main property listings site last month.

A total of 32,233 apartments were listed for sale on Hemnet in April, 40 percent more than the same month last year and the highest number ever for a single month. A lot of these ads are however for upcoming sales rather than apartments that are already up for public viewings.

“The high supply is an effect of a long period of a sluggish market rather than a risk factor for new price drops. This spring we’ve been seeing both rising prices and more activity. Especially as a result of the fact that we appear to be at peak interest rate and that the first interest cut is drawing near,” writes Hemnet market analyst Erik Holmberg in a comment quoted by Swedish news agency TT.

ESSENTIAL TIPS:

The previous record month was October 2023, when a total of 31,985 ads were posted on Hemnet.

The Local has previously reported that Swedish property prices are also on the rise as the market kicks into action.

A major reason behind the flood of apartments for sale is the expectation that Sweden’s central bank, the Riksbank, will soon slash the country’s main interest rate. While this is expected to bump up prices, it is on the other hand also likely to lead to lower mortgage rates.

EXPLAINED:

The Riksbank will announce its next decision on Wednesday.

This is a crucial announcement as the so-called policy rate is the bank’s main monetary policy tool. It decides which rates Swedish banks can deposit in and borrow money from the Riksbank, which in turn affects the banks’ own interest rates on savings, loans and mortgages. 

Sweden’s policy rate is relatively high at the moment, 4.0 percent (the highest since 2008), because of the Riksbank trying to bring down inflation. If bank interest rates are high, it’s expensive to borrow money, which means people spend less and as a result inflation drops.

But now that inflation is on its way down, Riksbank chiefs themselves have said that they think it’s likely that they will cut the policy rate in either May or June, and several economists predict that the cut is going to come sooner rather than later, which would mean this week.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

MONEY

Swedish central bank chief: Economy entering ‘new phase’

Erik Thedéen, governor of Sweden's central bank, the Riksbank, believes that the country's "surprisingly resilient" economy is entering a new phase after a few years of inflation and rising interest rates.

Published: 20 May 2024 14:56 CEST
Swedish central bank chief: Economy entering 'new phase'

“Concerns remain, but from an inflation perspective, prospects look much brighter,” Thedéen said at an event at the Swedish Economic Association. “We are entering a new phase for monetary policy and for the Swedish economy, as inflation is now back close to the [two percent] target, which among other things enables real wage increases.”

Earlier in May, the central bank lowered the policy rate by 0.25 percentage points to 3.75 percent – the first time the rate has dropped in eight years, after a period of eight hikes between 2022 and 2023, where the rate rose from 0 to 4 percent.

These hikes were made in order to lower inflation, which at its highest point in December 2022 stood at 10.2 percent.

“The upturn [in inflation] was partly due to a series of global supply shocks that led to sharp cost increases for companies, and partly due to a large pent-up consumption need among households after the pandemic, and thus high demand,” he said.

“Together, these factors in turn contributed to a change in the nature of companies’ pricing behaviour. This manifested itself in more frequent price increases and a greater pass-through from cost increases to price increases.”

The most recent inflation figures from March and April this year put inflation at 2.2 and 2.3 percent, much closer to the central bank’s 2 percent target.

“We now know that inflation is by no means ‘dead’, as it was sometimes labelled when inflation was below the central banks’ inflation targets for a long period,” Thedéen said, before warning that prices may be more prone to increasing now than they were in the past.

“The threshold for raising prices may be lower now than it was before. For monetary policy, it will be important to monitor price-setting indicators,” he added.

He warned that we may not yet have seen the full impact of the hikes to the country’s policy rate, while describing the Swedish economy as “surprisingly resilient so far”.

“Interest rate-sensitive parts of the Swedish economy have of course been affected by the rate hikes. Household consumption has declined and residential investment has fallen sharply. But at an aggregate level, this has been offset by the relatively better performance of other parts of the economy.”

One factor behind this resilience, he said, was the high demand for labour.

“This may reflect the fact that companies have not anticipated a deep or prolonged downturn in economic activity and that real wages have been weak.”

Things are definitely looking brighter, but we may not be out of the woods just yet, he warned.

“There are some questions about what has happened to the structural economic relationships after the years of high inflation and, as always, there are risks of worse developments ahead. But so far, a ‘soft landing’ seems to be within reach.”

SHOW COMMENTS