Housing

Economics

Nine Years for a Flat

Berlin froze its rents in 2020, and in the weeks that followed the number of flats advertised fell by more than half. Catalonia capped its rents the same year, and researchers found no sign that supply shrank. Stockholm has held rents down since the war, and the average wait for a flat there is now nine years. The evidence says rent control works as designed, for the people it was designed for, and sends the bill to everyone who has not arrived yet.

By Raphael Bauer September 30, 2026 35 min read

The average tenant who got the keys to a rent-controlled flat in Stockholm last year had waited nine years for it. For a flat in the inner city the wait was twenty-one years. Nobody set out to build that. Sweden set out to build a system in …