Rent Woes? Your Rights Regarding Reasonable Rent

The housing situation in Lund and many other parts of Sweden is a mess. And those who don't speak Swedish can be hit harder by higher rents and closed doors. The International Housing Office, which is supposed to look for international students' needs, charged international students 50% more in rent than Swedish students. Asylum-seekers are charged higher rent because, according to a Migration Board official, "they're not used to our civilization and they don't know how washing machines and other things work."

According to Swedish housing law, it is illegal to charge unnecessarily high rent. The court states that

in short rent shall be reasonable and that it's not reasonable if it's significantly higher than the rent for an apartment with similar usage (translated from Hyresnämnden).

Those of you in search of housing in Lund have probably been seen rooms of offer for extremely high prices. Let's see...  On Blocket you can find a it costs nearly 8,000SEK to rent an apartment that's smaller than 50 square meters. How about 7,500SEK (not including electricity!) for a two room apartment with two month's rent in advance? Just how do people get away with this? Well, the tenants don't know or don't care to exercise their rights. The International Housing Office's practice of charging non-Swedish students more than Swedish students was put to an end as soon as a student affected by this reported them to the Discrimination Ombudsman and they ended up paying back rents for a total of over 1.5 million kr. For many students, the key to lower rent answer lies not with the Discrimination Ombudsman, but with other authorities.

For those of you that feel you are paying unreasonably high rent, it's time to acquaint yourself with your best weapon: the Swedish Union of Tenants and the court system. There are two ways reasonable rents can be requested and the method depends on how you rent your residence. By filling out this form (in English), you can ask for more information from the Swedish Union of Tenants. Your query should get a response within one working day. If it is found that your rent is unreasonable, you may be eligible to have the money you overpaid returned to you.

We at Smålands can also try to help you out if you feel that you are paying an unreasonable amount in comparison to similar residences. Let's put an end to rent gouging!