Buying an apartment in Sweden costs less than it did a year ago

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Apartment prices saw the sharpest decrease in the metropolitan areas of Sweden's two second-biggest cities, Gothenburg and Malmö, where a so-called bostadsrätt fell by two percent last month.

In both greater and central Stockholm apartment prices dropped by one percent in the same period, according to the real estate number crunchers at Svensk Mäklarstatistik.

The price of detached homes – villor – fell by one percent in November but remained steady in year-on-year figures, with the average home costing 3,025,000 kronor ($335,000).

In the Stockholm metropolitan area, a detached home now costs on average 5,588,000 kronor last month – with a five-percent drop in the last 12 months marking a downturn on the property market.

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As for bostadsrätter – one of the most common types of Swedish home ownership, which usually refers to apartments but can also be for example terraced or semi-detached housing – they, too, have been affected by a general trend of the housing market slowing down in the past year.

Bostadsrätt prices fell two percent in central Stockholm and Malmö, three percent in Gothenburg and two percent nationally compared to September-November last year, according to Svensk Mäklarstatistik.

But the prices vary hugely depending on where you live.

An apartment in central Stockholm costs on average 86,907 kronor per square metre, compared to 58,717 kronor per square metre in central Gothenburg or 30,501 kronor in Malmö.

This map by The Local shows how many square metres of property one million kronor buys you depending on where in Sweden you want to live (follow this link to read more about how we created this map):