Amorteringskravet - minskad skuldsättning eller högre trösklar för förstagångsköpare?

Abstract

This thesis examines the effect of the amorteringskrav, which is an amortization requirement, on the price of apartments in Gothenburg. More precisely, the purpose is to investigate whether the importance of the monthly fee has changed due to the introduction of the amortization requirement. A dataset of sales in Gothenburg during 2015 and 2016 have been used to determine how variables like the monthly fee, the size of the living area and the year of construction of the building affect the final price of the apartment. The thesis uses an uncontrolled before-after strategy to find out whether these effects changed at the time of the introduction of the amortization requirement.

The findings show that the importance of the monthly fee is the same before and after the introduction, but they also show that there are differences in how the square meter price gets lower with an increasing size of the apartment. This means that smaller apartments became relatively more expensive in relation to larger ones after the introduction of the amortization requirements.

The study concludes that the housing market in Gothenburg does not consider the new requirement to be an extra cost, but that it might have forced some buyers to choose a smaller apartment than they would have without the new amortization rule. It cannot be excluded that the amorteringskrav have contributed to higher prices on smaller apartments, and therefore made it more difficult for first time buyers to enter the market.