Housing Construction in Stockholm : Fundamental Factors’ Impact on Construction Volume

Abstract: Housing availability plays a central role for the mobility in the labour market and for the economic growth in a country. Housing construction in Sweden is now increasing strongly after a period of low construction during and after the financial crisis in 2008. Despite this, many of the Swedish municipalities indicate that there is a housing shortage, especially in the metropolitan regions. The main reason for this is that the population has grown at a faster pace compared to the number of homes. This thesis uses a regression analysis to analyse what fundamental economic factors that affected housing construction in Stockholm County between 1992 and 2016.  The result from the regression analysis shows that the repo rate, inflation, GDP, population, unemployment, housing prices, and construction cost, with a lag of seven, seven, zero, one, six, two, and three quarters respectively, have a significant effect on housing construction. Furthermore, the regression model showed a low significance level for income, thus this variable was excluded from the model. Moreover, a time trend was included in the regression model. The time trend shows statistically significance, and its β coefficient implies an approximate 3% increase in housing construction per year, on average. Moreover, the regression model, presented in this thesis, has an R-squared value of 0.73, which indicates that the model can explain 73% of the variation in housing construction in Stockholm County between 1992 and 2016.