COVID-19 and structural breaks : The case of the Swedish Housing Market

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