Walking around the town in which I have spent the majority of my youth. The town in question is Falkenberg, Sweden. Not much interesting about the place. But. Some interesting new places to live though.
People in Sweden have a hard time making the down payments needed to get a loan for buying a house. Especially newer ones. As most people still want new houses and the companies building them still want to sell they have come up with an incredibly stupid solution that fooled both stupid banks and our stupid government.
What they do is. Housing associations. Housing associations are normally used for apartment buildings where there are several housings under one roof. These new housing associations are made up of single family homes. Houses. They can build ten houses on a street and make it a housing association. Like the new BoKlok places:
The trick behind this whole schabang is pretty simple but yet genius. In a housing association all part owners (people owning housing within the association) help paying for the association’s costs. That’s maintenance and stuff like that. Stuff like that can also include interest costs. And that’s what they do now days. Costs for a loan that has helped pay for the construction of these new places.
So. End result. Instead of paying something like 3 000 000 SEK for a house. You pay 1 500 000 for housing in a housing association that happens to be made up of single family houses. The buyer only pays half the down payment and still gets his house. Interest remains somewhat the same and costs of living there pretty similar. Bank happy, customer happy, government happy. For now!
I think it might bring issues in the future. All the people in these associations will have to agree on so much weird stuff from here on. Fundamentally it’s just a scam. People will also have to agree on all changes any occupants might want to do to their home exteriors. There will be big changes in costs of living when interest moves up or down. The economy within the association must be well taken care of in order for a good solid future. The economy is taken care of by the people making the decisions. The people making the decisions are the people who own housing in a housing association. Are the people who own housing in a housing associations good at making economic decisions when they can’t find a way to get themselves a house to own?
It will be interesting to see what happens with it in the future. I’ll try to remind myself to have a look at them in 10 years or so. Might be the business of the century to buy up the majority of houses within these housing associations if they end up working poor, then break them up so you can sell the houses as house to own.