Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The ratio of housing cost vs real income almost tripled over the last 20 years in Sweden I think this is all that needs to be said on these articles. (There's a lot more that _could_ be said, such as how few actual birthing HN readers there are, but I think the economics is really simple at the root of it.) Besides, even the countries with really the worst outlook and conditions aren't falling all that fast. Russia…
But what is driving the housing prices up in the Nordics? Population decline would suggest weakening demand. The EU is famous for long lasting housing so lack of new inventory shouldn't hit supply side that hard.
Another huge problem right now is that the high prices has made it tricky for _older_ people to move, a large rent controlled apartment for an retired person is far cheaper than even the smallest new apartments if the lease is changed, so you have tons of retired people with kids that moved out (or should have moved out) living in 4-5 bedroom flats whilst families are crammed into smaller ones.
The only way out is to buy an apartment/house instead of renting, but here profit-taxation comes into play making elder people hesitant about selling because the huge price increases (often 90%) makes the 30% profit tax almost 30% of their selling price so they actually can't even afford to buy something reasonable since it'd anything relatively smaller would be too expensive for them.
One way out of this would be to lower the profit-tax of a dwelling by 0.5-1% for each year lived in it, that'd make retired people able to sell their dwellings w/o hardly any taxes and should enable a more dynamic market.