How can local governments in the absence of national regulations or incentive schemesmotivate private owners of post-war mass-housing for investments into ambitious retrofittingfor energy efficiency? The million-program houses’ lifecycle currently makes renovationsnecessary and this would be an excellent opportunity to realize an upgrading of their energyefficiencystatus. Private owners do however show no inclination to do so. An intertwinedarray of barriers towards energy-efficient renovation is explored in this study, while it seeks tofind out which new drivers are needed to overcome these barriers and create an intrinsicmotivation for the owners to undertake the anticipated investments. In an exploratory casestudy, these points are investigated in the context of the exemplifying case of the Bygga omDialogen project in Malmö, Sweden.Bygga om Dialogen, is reframing the situation of investments into energy-efficiency in abroader socio-economic context and thrives to create new drivers pushing the owners toundertake the investments via the tools of strategic niche management and reflexivegovernance. This study explores how a strategic niche management and reflexive governancecan be used to motivate a variety of stakeholders to scrutinize and reconsider theirassumptions of the renovation-business-case and how this can stimulate the owners to activelycontribute to the establishment of a new, innovative, cross-sectoral approach seeking torealize energy-efficient investments in the context of holistic sustainable development in theneighborhood of Lindängen. Additionally it is explored how strategic niche management canbe used to deal with the contextual, strategic and institutional uncertainties that the establishednetwork is facing. Ideally the vision of mutually realizing energy-efficient renovations as partof an inclusive socio-economic upgrading of the neighborhood, could act as a building blockand exemplifying case for similar neighborhoods nationwide- or even all over Europe.