Municipal governance and changing local rental markets: medium-sized municipalities’ strategies when meeting residential property investors

Sweden’s municipalities increasingly integrate and collaborate with private rental actors in housing production and urban planning.

Earlier research has shown that these actors’ housing management in the larger city-regions cause increased precariousness for tenants.

Yet we lack studies on how municipalities, beyond the larger cities, interact with property investors and how such interactions constrain or enable municipalities’ capacity to provide a sustainable housing production and urban planning.

Hence, the project aims to investigate municipal governance and residential property investors’ establishment in medium-sized municipalities.

The project will use qualitative methods to investigate municipal governance and interaction with property investors’ ownership and management of rental housing in local housing markets in medium-sized municipalities in Sweden.

It is urgent to understand property investors’ ownership and management of rental housing as it is increasingly becoming an integrated part of municipal housing provision.

Hence, the project investigates and analyzes how medium-sized cities interact with property investors and how these actors become integrated with different municipal administrations and objectives closely tied to social sustainability ambitions.

Also, the project investigates the tensions and contradictions that arise through the interaction between municipalities and residential property investors and their potential effect on citizens.