I had never heard of a land trust being used to keep rates affordable - sounds like a very cool model!
this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2024
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This is the most common form of "owning" apartments and other housing where you benefit from having common infrastructure like heating and water. "Bostadsrätt" in Swedish, Google translates the wiki page quite well. https://sv.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bostadsr%C3%A4tt
It seems like a good way of keeping investors from buying apartments and only allowing people in who are going to live in them. Better then nothing, but honestly I prefer the way it is done in say Germany. The co-op buys the building and everybody can become a member for a reasonable price. Then you are allowed to rent the apartment from the co-op, which pays the mortgage, utilities and other costs of the building. Anything left over is return to the members, which is meant to be nothing. Thanks to scale and time this means lower rents. Especially when the mortage is paid off. However you do not really built up wealth this way.
That's a good thing, not building wealth. Housing is a commodity that everyone needs, it shouldn't be an investment vehicle.
The Swedish model is pretty much private apartments, but no option of renting them out at all. That makes in unattractive for investors and speculators.
Due to other dysfunctions of the Swedish housing market, it's not exactly making housing affordable. Far from it, the housing coop market is mostly inaccessible to people without significant starting capital for a down payment on a mortgage. With the increased interest rates, they are also not particularly cheap in ongoing mortgage costs either.
True, thanks for clarifying this. But it does help to keep the utilites costs of the houses at actual cost, because the houses are co-owned and non-profit. It is also keeping out private speculation and "landlords" from the market with how the statues/rules are setup.
That seems similar to what is commonly enabled in the community land trust model!