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Sweden’s Decades-Long Failure to Integrate

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Re: Sweden’s Decades-Long Failure to Integrate

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> People settled in them for the ethnic support networks, learned the language, got better jobs and moved out in a few years, always replaced by more immigrants. >Now, people get stuck. Everyone I talked to named the Swedish real estate market as the reason. It’s almost impossible to rent an apartment in Stockholm or other big urban centers, and few can afford to buy one. Swedish housing prices were up 44 percent las…

Sweden is a place with large amount of land and a sparse population. Home prices has not tripled overall in Sweden. Those 23 regions are all districts of cities. When we talk about people moving out of those area, we are talking about people wanting to move from one part of a city to a richer part of the city. It is relevant from a integration perspective, but it is a rather important distinction. If people want jobs…

Yes it has, except maybe were the economy is in serious decline. I am guessing you haven't been to many smaller towns. Smaller cities with jobs, like say Lund are still very expensive. Sweden is just in denial over its complete failure.

https://www.ekonomifakta.se/Fakta/Ekonomi/Hushallens-ekonomi...

Re: Sweden’s Decades-Long Failure to Integrate

#12
post #10
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Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, interest rates have been very low for a long time, so renting money to buy an apartment was basically free. The politicians couldn't do much about that, but recently they introduced mandatory mortgage repayments. Not sure if it has had much of an impact though. There are far too few rental apartments available, I guess because economic liberalism has dominated in Sweden in recent decades. Buying an apartment ma…

Also, AFAIK, in Sweden you traditionally aren't expected to pay back the principal on your mortgage in any specific amount of time. They have added restrictions in recent years, but I think you can still start making only interest payments once the principal is worth half or less of the loan collateral. This combined with low interest rates would have the effect of letting home prices surge.

I wouldn't say it is tradition. It is just that since housing wasn't just left to the private market for much of the second half of the 20th century property prices were never that high to begin with. Even when prices were inflated, and crashed, in the 90s they were a third of what they are today.
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