My life these days is consumed with apartment hunting. It’s become a full time job. We went to NINE viewings today. Out of those, three are possibilities, but I’m sad to say that none were fantastic. We loved the building on one, on another we loved the two balconies. And the inner courtyard on another made me feel like I was in Italy. But of those, we did not like the neighborhood on one while the other two had very small living rooms that needed to serve double duty as dining rooms. We will visit two of the places again tomorrow to see what we think. And we are also planning which places we will go see tomorrow. It’s all depressing enough to make me think we should buy a place outside of the city.
Apartment hunting bonanza
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Hej! I am a New Yorker about to relocate to Stockholm (got permanent residency through my ex-husband). I will be looking to rent a place. I take it you are purchasing one, but do you know about the rental market? I can stay with him for a while but need my own place. It’s my understanding that the easiest thing to do is find a sublet?
Hej Anna,
We started this process by looking for a rental and discovered just how difficult that can be. Now we have been looking to buy instead. If you have a company that will sponsor you, try bostad direkt or a relocation service for help. The service would be worth the price if you can afford it–it’s the most pain-free way to find a place, especially if you don’t need it to be furnished. BTW, we are even on the waiting list for temporary corporate housing. Good luck!
Anna, the legal-rental market in Stockholm has been non existant for almost 25 years, it more luck then winning the lottery to get a rental apartment, if you dont go for the not-so-nice suburbs. So people buy, not that they have the money – the banks are happy to lend you the money for 90-95% of the apartment, if you have work of course, you don’t even have to pay interest, so it’s a sort of renting-apartment-from-the-bank system.
Now you think wow big risk, not so much for in-town apartments actually, since the apartment prices have gone up almost every year for the last 30 years. But of course if the prices dump and you have to sell, it’s your problem.
And now you ask, why are there not more built? There’s no space in town anymore, Stockholm is built on 11 islands, yes we could build 100 floor skyscrapers, but that is effectively stopped (thank god) by the city ‘nice-looking-advisory’.
But good luck from a native Stockholmer that has grown up with this problem 🙂
Hello!
The rental market in Stockholm is a real pain. As the admin says, it can be worthy to get an account in bostadirekt. I have been looking for an apartment for almost two months now with no luck. I now use some other methods like advertise myself through my website http://www.fransanchezoria.com/journal/2010-08/do-you-have-a-property-to-rent-in-stockholm-contact-me and google adwords.
Good luck!
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