Effects of higher capital costs in local housing markets: Study in Täby, Upplands-Bro and Upplands Väsby municipality

Abstract: This bachelor thesis aims to study the relationship between higher capital costs and the households' ability to repay their loans as well as how this affects the housing market. The work studies three areas in three different municipalities in the Stockholm region. The limitations for this report were that it primarily focused on areas that have relatively new housing developments where the interest rate was the sole alternating variable. Today, the interest rates for housing loans are very low which has resulted in that Swedish people has record breaking high leverages. Recently, a new amortization requirement was adopted. This will affect all households when they take new loans with an LTV of 50 percent. House prices in Sweden are at a historically high level, especially in the Stockholm region. Households’ expectations play a large impact on prices, and some experts believe that the market today is overvalued and that we are in a housing bubble, which, if it bursts, can bring negative impact on the housing market. Consequently, migration and housing demands has not previously been seen at these levels in Stockholm. In this paper, we intend to examine how rising interest rates will affect households with different leverage ratios in three different municipalities in the Stockholm county region. Utilizing data from sources such as InsightOne and Konsumentverket among others a spreadsheet was created comparing four different typical households that reflect the most common household composition within the selected municipalities. The disposable income, after all expenses for accommodation and necessities accounted for, will be examined. We will also analyze how these households would cope in a scenario where changing fundamentals give households higher housing costs and further how the selected municipalities, all of which have a relatively high rate of construction, would be affected by a sudden drop in prices on the market. A spreadsheet with data from Statistics Sweden was also set up to investigate the percentage of all households in Stockholm that have the same capital costs as a custom range of the selected mosaichouseholds’. Our results show that not all households could cope with increased housing costs such as higher interest rates among other factors. According to the calculated budget estimate for each typical household, it was concluded that some households would be unable to cover their monthly necessities. In a scenario where this would become reality, the households with a high leverage and a high interest rate would have a much smaller amount of money to live on each month. This would lead to a reduction in consumption and a decrease in demand for housing, which would result in a less secure position in the housing market and force households to reassess its choice of timing for this type of investment. Ultimately this could lead to vacancies in the municipalities we investigated that are located quite a bit outside the city center. Based on our results, we consider the hypothesis proven; due to half of the mosaic households in the study reflecting a deficit in their budget when the leverage and interest rates peaked at high levels. Based on the income statistics from SCB, we could also deduce that 49.8 percent of all households in the Stockholm region displayed a lower annual income than the investigated mosaic households. Consequently, these households would demonstrate a greater deficit in their budget if their housing costs rose.