During the first half of this year, sales of newly built houses and apartments increased compared with the corresponding period last year, according to statistics from the housing website Booli, a subsidiary of the bank SBAB.
But sales volumes remain low.
New homes are relatively expensive compared with those that compete with the older stock because new production costs have risen so much, says SBAB's chief economist Robert Boije.
The picture is shared by the dominant player, Hemnet.
Forced to lower price
In week 30, the median time a newly built home was on the market at Booli was 191 days. This means that in half of the cases, it took longer before the properties could be removed from the market.
This can be compared with parts of 2023 and 2024, when the median time was over 300 days.
The proportion of newly produced homes where the construction company or property developer has been forced to lower the price to get the property sold remains at relatively high levels, although the proportion has decreased slightly.
But there are other tricks to use to attract potential buyers, such as “free months.”
This is the case, for example, in the Vega district of Haninge south of Stockholm, where Ikano Bostad is offering a full 24 months without fees in newly built condominiums. Companies such as Stena Fastigheter and JM are also running similar campaigns.
Part of the value disappears
But what sounds good now can become bitter medicine later when the home is sold. According to the Swedish Tax Agency, capital gains tax is paid on free months, which means that 22 percent of the value of the campaign is lost in tax. The Swedish Tax Agency sees such discounts in practice as a price reduction on the home.
"Anyone who is offered free or discounted monthly fees in connection with the acquisition of a newly built condominium shall reduce their acquisition cost by the discount actually received," the Swedish Tax Agency writes in a position statement from 2014.
The Swedish Tax Agency confirms to TT that the position still applies.
For sales of newly built homes to really take off, prices in the older stock need to rise, according to SBAB. Another alternative is that it becomes cheaper to build new, but that is not realistic, says Robert Boije.
I have a hard time seeing that.
