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The official way to get an apartment in Stockholm, Sweden is to put your name on a list and wait 10 years

stockholm sweden
stockholm sweden

tarquingemstone/Flickr

Considering that Stockholm is among the five fastest growing regions in Europe, according to the City of Stockholm, it is fair to say the city's housing situation is urgent. 

Housing policies dating from earlier decades established a system in Stockholm, where people only gain access to rental apartments (with capped prices) by registering in a queue, and waiting for an apartment allotted by the Stockholm Housing Agency.

The intention was to make sure that everybody, not only the wealthy, could afford to live in central Stockholm.

But as the city has grown in size, the queuing times have become longer.

Gradually the entire rental market in the Swedish capital has gone "dark", meaning that your best chance of finding a flat is to rely on family- or professional connections.

These two graphs show the numbers behind the other option for getting your flat in Stockholm, i.e. queuing up.

This graph shows how quickly the waiting lines have grown for apartments in Stockholm:

sweden housing lines oecd stockholm housing agency
sweden housing lines oecd stockholm housing agency

Stockholm Housing Agency

Queues have grown from less than 100,000 by the turn of the millennium to more than 550,000 in 2016. 

OECD provided this graph in its recent analysis of the Swedish economy, and concluded that the capital's rental regulations hinder mobility, and recommends that Sweden:

"Ease rental regulations to incentivize housing supply, mobility and better utilization of the housing stock, while maintaining tenant protection against abuse."

OECD also highlights the growing gap between owners and renters as a major contribution to inequality in Sweden. Buying your own apartment in Stockholm, where prices are hitting new records every year, is currently a privilege reserved to relatively few. 

The waiting line for rental apartments (including student housing) grew with eight percent, or almost 40,000 people, during 2016. This stands in stark contrast to Stockholm Housing Agency's ability to cater to this skyrocketing demand Last year, only some 12,000 people got their apartments through the agency, albeit a new record.

Here are the average waiting times for an apartment in Stockholm (år = years):

kotider 2016 swedish housing agency
kotider 2016 swedish housing agency

Stockholm Housing Agency

The average waiting time to be eligible for a rental apartment in Stockholm was nine years in 2016. The average waiting times are 14 and 16 years in attractive central neighborhoods like Kungsholmen and Södermalm, respectively. 

It's normal practice in Stockholm that parents register their newborns in the rental queue, so that they have a chance of their own flat once they graduate high school. 

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