How banks set the mortgage interest rates and the sizes of the mortgage margins they obtain from making mortgage loans always attract attention from households, government authorities, politicians and market actors. This thesis studies the relationship between Swedish mortgage interest rates and mortgage lending institutions’ costs of obtaining funds, and how the gross margins of mortgage interest rates influence the banks stock returns. In general, banks’ mortgage margins are correlated with their funding costs, which are typically reflected in the yields of mortgage bonds (covered bonds), interbank rates (STIBOR) and the repo rate. How-ever the correlations change over time and sometimes the mortgage margins are relatively low and sometimes relatively high. Since mortgage loans play an important role in banks’ lending business, the related interest rate margins should influence banks’ profitability and therefore the performance of their stock. Everything else equal, higher margins should result in higher stock returns. I have collected and constructed a time-series data set based on Swedbank mortgage rates, Swedbank stock prices, yields on government bonds, yields on mortgage bonds, STIBOR interest rates, and repo rate. Both descriptive analysis and econometric models are applied to analyze the time-varying characteristics of the financial data. The thesis covers unconditional correlation (Pearson correlations), and conditional correlation through applying DCC-GARCH models. Besides, ARCH and GARCH models are employed to measure the ARCH and GARCH effects of the spread (premium) terms between interest rates. The results from descriptive analysis and econometric models present the tight relationships between the mortgage interest rates and the corresponding funding costs, and show the posi-tive but low correlations between mortgage margins and bank’s stock returns. The results also support the existence of time-vary volatilities (risk) of spread (premium) terms and quantify the growth of return for the certain increase in risk taking.

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This paper analyzes how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the Swedish housing market, and in particular prices and shifts in trends. Different classes of housing objects in various counties are investigated. Combining web scraped housing data for the entirety of Sweden between 2016-01-01 and 2021-03-31, including economic, demographic, socioeconomic and locational data, a hedonic regression model is used to estimate how different variables influence the housing price. The base model is subsequently used to investigate if statistically significant structural breaks exist in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic for the different object types in the entire Swedish market and in certain specific counties. Structural breaks are found for the housing object types ‘Fritidshus’, ‘Lägenhet’ and ‘Radhus’ in the entire Swedish market and for “Villa” in Stockholm county shortly after the pandemic outbreak, suggesting there is evidence for a pandemic infused shift in housing price regime on the Swedish housing market for these object types in stated areas. Splitting the hedonic regression model into three, one pooled regression, one before and one after the identified breaks, and comparing the shifts in impact of the housing price determinants suggests different pandemic effects on different object types. The result indicates that for the object types ‘Lägenhet’ in the entire country and for ‘Villa’ in Stockholm county, living area has an increased impact on the price while the locational variable population density has a decreased impact after the breakpoint date compared to before. This could suggest that for permanent housing objects in these regions, living area might have become increasingly valued over location during the pandemic. The results further indicate the direct opposite effect on the shifted impact in living area and the population density for the price of the temporary housing type Fritidshus in entire Sweden. However, an indication for increased impact of the areas socioeconomic level is noted for all these three object types. These results hold as a ground for further research in the subject.

This paper investigated the discrimination against transgender people in the Swedish rental housing market, and is one of the first correspondence studies to examine this question at hand. A total of 800 applications were sent to various landlords advertising rental vacancies on Blocket.se. In total, the cisgender applicants attained a call back rate of 60.7 %, while the transgender applicants attained a rate of 59.0 %. Furthermore, no unequal treatment was found in positive employer responses for being transgender, when compared to the cisgender group. In the case, where the cisgender and transgender groups were evaluated separately, a favoring of having a woman as a tenant over a man was prominent when comparing the testers within the cisgender  group.  A penalty of 12.6 % in positive landlord responses was found for the trans man, in terms of likelihood of getting an invitation to additional contact or to showing, when compared to the cis woman. Similarly, the trans woman had a 7.4 % lesser likelihood in getting an invitation to showing than the cis woman. With regards to these results, one can conclude that there exists both discrimination based on gender and gender identity in the rental housing market in Sweden.

The indebtedness of Swedish households has more than doubled in the last ten decades despite the implementation of a mortgage ceiling and stricter amortization requirements. This study takes form to investigate how it is possible that debt related to housing is rising while new regulations against it has been set and how housing prices continues to increase when lending is supposed to be harder.This analysis estimates whether there are indications of an existing price bubble in the housing market of Stockholm. It is done by testing fundamental economic factors to the price index of housing in Stockholm, to see if they support the price development. If the analysis shows that housing prices cannot be predicted by the fundamental economic factors, it is possible that the price is a self-running series1 which could be an indicator of a price bubble. If fundamental factors that are being used as control variables seem to follow the same trend as the price development of the housing market, the speculation of price bubble will be rejected.

Idag har vi höga räntor och stigande inflation. Nyproduktionsmarknaden är trögareän andrahandsmarknaden vilket har skapat ett prisglapp mellan andrahandsbostäderoch nyproduktioner. Högre månadsavgifter och en risk att de behöver höjasytterligare, samt en lång köpprocess bidrar också till en lägre efterfrågan pånyproduktioner. Det här arbetet började med frågor som: Hur tänkerbostadsutvecklare i den här situationen? Hur agerar de? Dessa frågor är vad det härarbetet redogör för, vilka strategier och erbjudanden använder sig företag av för attfå sålt svårsålda bostäder, samt vad som ligger bakom dessa beslut. Syftet med det här arbetet är att presentera, analysera och jämföra de erbjudandenoch strategier som företag använder sig av för att lyckas sälja svårsålda bostäder. Resultatet bygger på en blandning av kvalitativa och kvantitativa studier. Detinleddes med en observationsstudie för att få en överblick av de erbjudanden somfinns på marknaden, samt för att ta fram statistik. Detta kompletterades medkvalitativa intervjuer och fallstudier för att få en djupare förståelse för vad som liggerbakom strategierna och erbjudandena. För att få en bredd i svaren bestårrespondenterna av representanter från bostadsutvecklare av olika storlek och medolika geografiskt verksamhetsområde. Analysen visar på stora likheter i resonemanget bakom valet av strategi ocherbjudande. Samtidigt finns det både likheter och skillnader mellan vilka erbjudandenoch strategier man använder sig av. Slutsatsen presenterar samtliga erbjudanden och strategier som observerats understudien. Där beskrivs även hur resonemanget bakom är en bedömning som görsfrån fall till fall utifrån en stor mängd olika faktorer, till exempel målgrupp, vart iprocessen projektet befinner sig och hur mycket man har osålt. / Today we have high interest rates and rising inflation. The new production market isslower than the secondary market, which has created a price gap betweensecondary housing and new productions. Higher monthly fees and a risk of furtherincreases, as well as a long buying process, also contribute to lower demand for newbuilds. This work started with questions such as: How do housing developers think inthis situation? How do they act? These questions are the subject of this study, whatstrategies and offers do companies use to sell homes in this market, and what isbehind these decisions. The purpose of this study is to present, analyze and compare the offers andstrategies used by companies to successfully sell homes in this market. The results are based on a mix of qualitative and quantitative studies. The researchbegan with an observation study to get an overview of the offers available on themarket and to collect statistics. This was complemented by qualitative interviews andcase studies to gain a deeper understanding of the reasoning behind the strategiesand offers. In order to get a wide range of answers, the respondents consist ofrepresentatives from housing developers of different sizes and different geographicalareas of operation. The analysis shows great similarities in the reasoning behind the choice of strategyand offer. At the same time, there are both similarities and differences between theoffers and strategies used. The conclusion presents all the offers and strategies observed during the study. Italso describes how the reasoning behind them is an individual assessment based ona large number of different factors, such as the target audience, where in theprocess the project is and how much is unsold.

The housing market has seen increased housing prices and low inflation for the last decade. This study aims to answer if inflation affects the housing prices in Jönköping by looking at both the county and municipality levels. We are investigating apartments and small houses at both levels. To test this empirically, quarterly data was used for all variables using a multiple regression analysis for the years 2005 and 2021. The results display some differences between the two regions with the county being the preferred model of choice. We can not conclude with statistical significance that inflation affects housing prices. We conclude that a relationship between housing prices and inflation in Jönköping county and municipality seems to be present.

Predicting U.S. recessions using the slope of the Treasury yield curve has been the focus of extensive research over the past two decades. This yield curve has consistently predicted economic downturns in the United States whenever the curve becomes flat or inverted and recent research has concluded that adding the federal funds rate produces a more accurate model. With the recent recession of 2008 and the housing market's suspected role, I use new data and add a housing index variable to previous models in order to test the correlation and improve the predictive power of the overall model. I run multiple probit regressions to estimate probabilities of a recession within a number of future quarters. I find that models that include the housing index variable in addition to the yield curve and federal funds rate variables give a better in-sample fit and performance than models that do not use it. I discuss the implication of these results in light of the recent recession, and in terms of what this could imply for the future.

Det finansiella systemet är nära sammanlänkat med bolånemarknaden, tillgången till finansiering har blivit större och allt fler hushåll väljer att belåna sig. Det medför fördelar med även nackdelar då det finansiella systemet är ytterst känsligt för störningar på bolånemarknaden. Det är även svårt att konstatera vad som menas med en övervärderad bostadsmarknad då olika definitioner ges av olika aktörer. Prisutvecklingen ligger idag över sin långsiktiga trend vilket har gett upphov till spekulation om en eventuell bostadsbubbla. Enligt aktuella utredningar ser dock bostadspriserna ut att ha anpassat sig till nya tillväxtvillkor i form av sjunkande räntenivåer, lägre bostadsbyggande samt ökade hushållsinkomster och anses därmed i stor utsträckning kunna förklaras av fundamentala faktorer. I syfte att förhindra en osund utveckling på kreditmarknaden infördes ett bolånetak och sedan införandet har belåningsgraden för nya lån sjunkit, utöver det har även andelen bolån med belåningsgrad över 85 procent minskat. Det talas dock om huruvida belåningsgraden är hållbar och om säkerhetsmarginalerna är tillräckliga. Sammanfattningsvis redovisar studien att alltfler unga hushåll får hjälp av familj för att kunna etablera sig på bostadsmarknaden. Dessa unga hushåll har ofta irrationella förväntningar gällande bostadspriserna då de extrapolerar bakåt vid slutsatser om framtiden, samtidigt som merparten anser att priserna är övervärderade. Men till skillnad från den allmänna debatten där bolånetagare ofta framställs som oansvariga, visar studien på det motsatta. Huvudparten amorterar enligt bankens rekommendationer och är medvetna om eventuella ränteförändringar vilket tyder på en sund belåning. Den hårt reglerade hyresmarknaden begränsar dock alternativen för de som egentligen inte vill ta sig in på ägarmarknaden och kan därmed innebära riskfyllda bostadsköp. Således visar studien på en splittrad inställning avseende bostadsköpet då många hellre hade valt att hyra om det fanns ett större utbud av hyresrätter till skäliga priser. / The financial system is closely linked to the mortgage market, the availability of financing has become greater and increasingly more households choose to own and borrow. It brings advantages and disadvantages when the financial system is extremely sensitive to disturbances in the mortgage market. It is difficult to determine the meaning of an overvalued housing market due to the different definitions given by different actors. The price trend is currently above its long-term trend that has given rise to speculation about a possible housing bubble. However according to recent investigations housing prices appear to have adapted to the new growth conditions in the form of falling interest rates, lower housing and increased household incomes and is thus largely explained by fundamental factors. In order to prevent an unhealthy trend in the credit market, a mortgage limit has been introduced and since its introduction the value ratio for new loans has dropped, beyond that, the proportion of mortgages with LTV above 85 percent has also declined. There is a discussion, however, about whether the leverage is sustainable and whether the safety margins are adequate. In conclusion, the study shows that more and more young households receive help from family in order to establish themselves in the housing market. These young households tend to have illogical expectations about prices on the housing market because they extrapolate backward regarding conclusions about the future, while the majority believes that prices are overvalued. But unlike the general debate where mortgage holders are often portrayed as irresponsible, the study shows the opposite. The majority amortizes according to the bank's recommendations and are aware of any changes in interest rates, indicating a healthy leverage. The highly regulated rental market, however, limits the options for those who don’t really want to enter the ownership market and can thus involve risky home purchases. Thus, the study shows a fragmented approach regarding home purchases when many would rather have chosen to rent if there was a greater range of rental units at reasonable prices.

I universitetsstäder måste det finnas möjlighet för studenter att bo, ofta brukar det finnas speciella studentbostäder. Tidigare forskning har visat att studenter koncentrerar sig till vissa platser vilket kan leda till en nedgång av ett bostadsområdes skick, så kallad studentifiering. I denna fallstudie undersöks hur studenter väljer bostad samt hur de upplever sina respektive bostadsområden. För att få svar på detta har en kvantitativ metod använts, en enkät har delats ut till studenter i Uppsala, villkoret har varit att de hade Uppsala som studieort (i motsats till distansstudier). Agens diskuteras, något som kan påverka val av bostad, men är svårt att kvantifiera. Resultaten tyder på att det inte finns samband mellan studenters bakgrund och bosättningsmönster, men ger inga entydiga svar. Det kan däremot finnas olika studentkulturer som koncentreras till lokala studentbostadsområden. Vilka kriterier studenterna har vid val av bostad bekräftar tidigare forskning.