Properties: Swedish Summer Homes Turning Into All-Year Abodes
In Sweden, the traditional image of the simple red-painted summer house with white trim — the coloring agent in the red paint is rust — is undergoing something of a transformation.
The country’s economic growth, urban sprawl and a desire on the part of many Swedes to expand the use of their second homes is changing the summer-house market into a year-round one.
Gustavsberg, a town of 10,000 residents that is 22 kilometers, or 14 miles, east of Stockholm, is a case in point. A generation ago, the town’s rocky, wooded countryside was outside the commuter belt; now many summer houses in and around Gustavsberg are being used throughout the year, often after major improvements.
Sweden has about 700,000 summer houses for its 9.3 million inhabitants and, given that many of these cottages are owned by extended families, a majority of Swedes have access to at least one.
“Swedes have a near-reverence for their summer houses,” stated Jeremy Duns, a British novelist who has lived in Stockholm since 2004. “They associate them with a detachment from the pressures of urban life and getting back in tune with nature, even if they are only an hour or so away from their main homes.”
The value of summer houses has increased by an average of 5 percent in the last two years, compared with a 15 percent increase in year-round residential property and homes renovated for year-round use, stated Staffan Sälg, who is based in Hamburg and is expansion manager for Scandinavia at Engel & Völkers, a real estate agency.
The total volume of summer house sales in the past 12 months here was 7.3 billion Swedish kronor, or $1.1 billion. (There is no tally of summer homes renovated for year-round use.) In common with a number of other markets, the Swedish property sector as a whole experienced a minor crash in the middle of 2008.
The Swedish market overall is attracting an increased number of overseas buyers recently, primarily because of the favorable exchange rate. The euro reached 11 kronor in February 2010; it now is 8.9.
They have also been attracted by Sweden’s countless unspoiled lakes, forests and islands.
Jens Koch, a businessman from Kiel, Germany, purchased a three-bedroom home 20 kilometers from Ljungby, a town of 15,000 residents in the southern Swedish province of Smaland. The summer house, which includes a paddock and stables, cost 1.1 million kronor in 2008.
“The pleasures of a Swedish summer are always the same,” stated Mr. Koch, who has vacationed regularly in Smaland with his family, which includes two teenagers. “We enjoy swimming, canoeing, picking berries and the fresh air. Most of all, the peace and quiet helps us reconnect as a family during the summer break after a hectic year.”
The Koch family take advantage of Sweden’s “allemansratt,” a constitutional “right to roam” that gives everyone access to walk and cycle on private, uncultivated land away from houses and gardens, and pick wild flowers, berries and mushrooms — as long as they do so with discretion and do not disturb the environment.
Like many traditional summer houses in Sweden, the Koch house has a deck, but the toilet and shower are in an outhouse, and there is no central heating. The biggest expenses was the installation of a sauna.
But Mr. Koch hesitates to call his summer house an investment. “Domestically,” he said, “there is hardly any rental market in summer houses, and the Swedish summer is so short, you want to enjoy it all for yourself.”
His only complaint is the mosquitoes, which are the bane of the summer months in Scandinavia.
Kronoberg County, which contains Ljungby, has the largest proportion of overseas property owners who are not permanent residents, according to Sweden’s Statistics Agency. Foreigners now own about 33,000 summer houses in Sweden; Danes and Germans head the list, followed by Norwegians, Dutch and British.
Southern Sweden has relatively simple road access to the Netherlands and northern Germany, in particular, but a number of adventurous overseas buyers have also purchased in Lapland.
Travelapland, a British-owned company, has purchased and renovated, then resold, seven farmhouses in the Jokkmokk area to buyers from Britain, Poland, Hungary and Sweden itself. The average price of the properties was 500,000 kronor, stated David Wells of Travelapland.
Mr. Wells stated a Polish had client purchased a home purely to use it for fishing vacations.
All of the buyers stated they were attracted to the peace and quiet of a wilderness that is as far away from Malmo (a city close to Sweden’s southern tip) as Malmo is from Rome.
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Submited at Tuesday, January 25th, 2011 at 1:04 am on House by samantha
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