2022.08.23
The number of new housing starts is falling
Statistics Sweden released its report on the number of new housing starts in the country in week 34. The statistics show that approximately 31,050 apartments were started during the first half of 2022. This is a decrease of approximately 11 percent compared to the same period in 2021, when 34,826 apartments were started.
Approximately 23,950 apartments were started in apartment buildings, which is 14 percent fewer than in the first half of 2021. Of the apartments in apartment buildings, 60 percent are (will be) provisionally leased as rental units. Of the total number of apartments started, approximately 7,100 are in single-family homes, which is 2 percent more than in the same period in 2021.
During the period, ongoing renovations also resulted in an addition of 1,600 apartments. This can be compared with an addition of 1,710 apartments during the first half of 2021.
The decline continued in July
Now all the country's construction starts are falling instead of continuing to rise, driven by a slump in housing construction. This is also shown by the construction start indicator from the analysis company Byggfakta. Construction starts in Sweden continued to fall in July and together with strong downward revisions earlier this year, it paints a completely new picture of the construction of properties, comments Byggfakta's head of analysis Tor Borg.
“This means that the trend calculation now takes on a completely different trajectory,” he says, adding that all the talk about how soaring construction costs are causing projects to be postponed is also really starting to show up in the statistics now.
He also adds that the large downward revisions mean that the construction starts indicator now signals that, according to Statistics Sweden's statistics, housing starts will fall sharply during the rest of 2022, to under 50,000 housing starts for the full year.
/Kent Oderud
