An Interesting Perspective

So for those people who aren't familiar with the Swedish housing market, it can be a bit interesting (or frustrating depending on how you see it). In terms of rentals, the current system involves people signing up on queues for various apartment companies, and hoping that you are at the top of the queue when a good apartment comes up for grabs. This means that once a person has a first-hand rental contract they are very hesitant to give it up. For this reason, its really hard to get a first-hand contract (especially in Uppsala). Instead you have to sub-let from someone. This is extremely evident at this time of year as there are now many apartments listed for rent for the months of May through August, and very few for any longer than that (August is when school starts again). Rent is also controlled by the government and so rental prices are fairly low, at least when you look at the demand, and do not differ that much across the city. This means that we paid about $950 Canadian for an apartment in the most desirable part of town, that was approximately 800 sq feet, and had a beautiful courtyard and now we pay $800 for an apartment that is half the size, in a less nice neighbourhood, where we look at all our neighbours across the street. It also means that there are way fewer apartments than are needed as companies are not willing to build more because they don't make enough money. The Swedish government is in fact thinking of changing this though...check this out for more info on the current "hot" debate in Sweden.

Anyways, the good news is, is that we may have found an apartment for the rest of our time here. We are going to take a look at on Thursday afternoon, so keep your fingers crossed. The only bad thing is that we might have to overlap with our current contract for a couple of months, but I guess its worth the cost if we have peace of mind.

My other news is that I finally signed up for the free Swedish courses offered by the government but they probably won't start until August, so we'll see if I'm still interested by then :)

After our experiences here looking for a place to live, I can only say that I don't think that I will ever get as stressed about finding a place as I have been here. I'm looking forward to moving back and being able to find a place that we can keep for as long as we want! We could probably very easily become professional movers with all our moving expertise :p

God kväll!
E.