by Sweden’s growing housing bubble House prices are increasing fast in EU. And more so in Sweden than in any other member state, as shown in the Eurostat graph below, showing percentage increase in annually deflated house price index by member state 2015: Sweden’s house price boom started in mid-1990s, and looking at the development of real house prices during the last three decades there are reasons to be deeply worried. The indebtedness of the Swedish household sector has also risen to alarmingly high levels: Yours truly has been trying to argue with ‘very serious people’ that it’s really high time to ‘take away the punch bowl.’ Mostly I have felt like the voice of one calling in the desert. Where do housing bubbles come from? There are of course many different explanations, but one of the fundamental mechanisms at work is that people expect house prices to increase, which makes people willing to keep on buying houses at steadily increasing prices. It’s this kind of self-generating cumulative process à la Wicksell-Myrdal that is the core of the housing bubble. Unlike the usual commodities markets where demand curves usually point downwards, on asset markets they often point upwards, and therefore give rise to this kind of instability. And, the greater leverage, the greater the increase in prices.
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Lars Pålsson Syll considers the following as important: Economics
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Sweden’s growing housing bubble
House prices are increasing fast in EU. And more so in Sweden than in any other member state, as shown in the Eurostat graph below, showing percentage increase in annually deflated house price index by member state 2015:
Sweden’s house price boom started in mid-1990s, and looking at the development of real house prices during the last three decades there are reasons to be deeply worried. The indebtedness of the Swedish household sector has also risen to alarmingly high levels:
Yours truly has been trying to argue with ‘very serious people’ that it’s really high time to ‘take away the punch bowl.’ Mostly I have felt like the voice of one calling in the desert.
Where do housing bubbles come from? There are of course many different explanations, but one of the fundamental mechanisms at work is that people expect house prices to increase, which makes people willing to keep on buying houses at steadily increasing prices. It’s this kind of self-generating cumulative process à la Wicksell-Myrdal that is the core of the housing bubble. Unlike the usual commodities markets where demand curves usually point downwards, on asset markets they often point upwards, and therefore give rise to this kind of instability. And, the greater leverage, the greater the increase in prices.
What is especially worrying is that although the aggregate net asset position of the Swedish households is still on the solid side, an increasing proportion of those assets is illiquid. When the inevitable drop in house prices hits the banking sector and the rest of the economy, the consequences will be enormous. It hurts when bubbles burst …