Benchmark

Housing Shock Conjures Swedish Crisis Ghost

Swedish house prices post biggest monthly decline since 2008, raising bubble fears

A line of traffic passes retail stores on a street in the Kungsgatan district of central Stockholm, Sweden, on Wednesday, June 28, 2017. 

Photographer: Mikael Sjoberg/Bloomberg
Lock
This article is for subscribers only.

The country that over the past decade sailed through the financial and European debt crises largely unscathed is now being confronted by a specter from its dark past.

Sweden’s housing market is cooling fast, raising concerns that the Nordic nation will face a repeat of the real estate crash in the early 1990s that brought the economy and its banks to their knees, broke the krona and had government officials haggling with foreign creditors.