The property owners demand sharply increased rents in Stockholm and Gothenburg next year.
The trade association, which represents 15,000 members and negotiates 320,000 apartment rents, wants to see a 12 percent increase in the country’s two largest cities.
Rising interest rates, increased municipal fees for water and sewage and rising maintenance costs are some of the expenses behind the demand.
Protracted negotiations
— The incredibly large cost increases are hitting the real estate industry hard. Then you have to be compensated for it. Otherwise, in the long run, it affects the tenants in the form of poorer maintenance and significantly poorer housing, says Rikard Ljunggren, CEO of Fastighetsägarna GFR in Gothenburg.
Last fall, the Property Owners came out with a demand of 10 percent. After protracted negotiations, the increase landed at around 4 percent on average.
The tenant association’s head of negotiations Carl-Johan Bergström believes that the demand for 12 percent from the property owners for next year is mostly about positioning.
— You go out loud because you think it will bring advantages in the negotiations. But it is a completely unreasonable demand that they come up with, he says and continues:
— We must remember that the tenants are coming from a year with the highest rent increase in 30 years. It’s tough already, this would totally break the finances of a lot of tenants.
Carl-Johan Bergström says that he understands that property owners have received increased costs, but that at the same time it comes after “decades of extremely good times”.
“They have had stable income all along and previously justified rent increases with the fact that they must also be able to save for worse times,” he says.
“Hold Again”
But according to Rikard Ljunggren, the requirement is based on a “reasonableness assessment from a tenant’s perspective”. According to the Property Owners’ calculations, the increase should rather be 14 percent, he says.
— We have actually even held back a little. You may think that 12 percent sounds like a lot, but for an average third party for 7,000, it is about SEK 800 a month.
Now the parties will sit down and negotiate.
— We will not go out with any counteroffer at a low level to position ourselves. But we will sit down in the negotiation room to find a solution, says Carl-Johan Bergström.