“Over the past 15 years, household debt has increased significantly in Sweden. The Swedish households have nearly doubled its debt in relation to their income since the mid-1990s”, says Debt collections Sydney Since mortgages represent about 80 percent of household debt, the great increase in debt combined with sharply increased housing prices led to a concern that credit growth will be unsustainable. In this article we review the existing economic literature in light of this development and try to find possible explanations, and even macro-economic implications. The large increase in household borrowings have been observed because there is a strong link between housing markets and household income. We also take up the driving forces behind the housing prices. We conclude with a discussion of the extent to which the results of international research on this subject can be used to illuminate the current debt situation in Sweden.
Over the past 15 years, credit growth in Sweden has far exceeded growth in household disposable income. This means that Swedish households’ indebtedness has increased significantly. After the sharp decline in household debt after the banking crisis during 1992-1993, household debt increased from 90 percent of disposable income in the mid-1990s to 170 percent in 2010. There are other countries with similar trends in household debt relative to income. Some of these growths in housing credit are the main factor in increasing household indebtedness. In most households they constitute the largest real estate asset, while mortgages are the main culprits. Housing prices have increased in Sweden since the mid-1990s.
“At the beginning of the financial crisis, real house prices in Sweden rose and fall by about five percent from 2008 to 2009″, says Sydney debt Collector. Since then the real house prices in Sweden have begun to rise again. The recent long-term increase in house prices in Sweden and in many other advanced countries has made the asset side of household balance sheets to grow, and in many cases, households’ net worth increased.