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Renting in Sweden: The most (and least) expensive cities for sublets

Catherine Edwards
Catherine Edwards - [email protected]
Renting in Sweden: The most (and least) expensive cities for sublets
Apartment buildings in a suburb of Stockholm, where average rent is almost three times the price of Sweden's cheapest city. File photo: Heléne Grynfarb/imagebank.sweden.se

There are huge differences in the price of sublets across Sweden, with average monthly rent in Stockholm nearly triple the cost of the cheapest cities, according to new statistics.

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The capital city was perhaps unsurprisingly the priciest place to sublet, also known as renting andrahand or 'second-hand'.

Second-hand rentals are those in which tenants rent from a person who either owns the apartment or who is renting it first-hand through the rent-controlled housing queue.

In the major cities these queues often last up to ten years, making sublets the only option for newcomers to the city who can't or don't want to buy, but there are legal limits on how much landlords can charge, intended to stop private individuals making a profit from subletting. 

The median monthly second-hand rent in Stockholm is 11,500 kronor according to data from classifieds site Blocket analyzed by housing magazine Hem & Hyra.

Second most expensive for subletters was Kungsbacka in Halland, south of Gothenburg, where the median second-hand rent was 9,850.

That was followed by Ystad in Skåne, best known to most internationals as the setting of many of crime writer Henning Mankell's novels, where monthly rent was around 9,550 kronor, followed by Helsingborg with a median figure of 9,125 kronor. Student city Uppsala came in fifth, at 8,000 kronor.

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A representative from Blocket said that several factors led to changes in rent, including the season and local events. 

"Rent level is closely linked to the supply which goes up considerably during August, to go down in September and October. The start of school for colleges and universities and job changes are factors that are probably at play," Blocket press officer Tero Rantamäki told the magazine.

As well as sublets typically being cheaper in August and January, Rantamäki said that events such as Midsummer or local festivals like Gothenburg's Way Out West also appeared to have an impact in pushing up rent prices.Meanwhile, rent in the five cheapest areas was between half and a third of the price in Stockholm.

The biggest bargains on sublets were to be found in Ronneby, Blekinge, with a median monthly rate of only 4,750 kronor, followed by Skara, Västergötland (4,850 kronor) and Lindesberg near Örebro (5,100 kronor).

Örnsköldsvik in northern Sweden had median monthly rent at a price of 5,287 kronor and in Enköping it cost 5,700 kronor, just over half the cost of a Stockholm sublet.

Although there are legal restrictions on second-hand rental prices, the housing shortage means that unscrupulous landlords may charge significantly more than the cost of first-hand rent, particularly in major cities.

 

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