Preferences and willingness to pay for housing

The Swedish rental market is significant and diversified.

In the public housing sector you will increasingly find the most vulnerable within the society, at the same time as there are private (and municipal) rentals at exclusive addresses in our large cities.

Typical of the rental system is that the rent for these different types of housing is determined in one system with the goal to create a reasonable rent development with fair rents and a security for the tenants.

In recent times, however, more and more problems with the Swedish system have come to attention.Against this background, several local attempts are currently being made to find innovative forms of rent setting within the framework of the Swedish rental system. A central ambition is to take greater account of tenants´ values ​​of the apartments´ location and quality.

In this way, rents in local housing markets will not only be diversified but also given increased transparency, predictability and fairness. How it works in practice, however, is disputed. An explanation for the problems seems to have to do with the methods for determining preferences for housing.

Against this background, this literature study aims to provide an overview of methods applied to determine willingness to pay for housing attributes at different types of housing markets in Sweden and in the rest of the world. We will also make an overview of methods used in other research areas than those directly focusing on housing.