Buyers and Sellers on the Stockholm Housing Market

Abstract: Buying and selling housing is for most a very important event that can strongly affect their financial situation. At the same time homes are recognized as places with great importance above and beyond financial matters and in everyday talk and in the previous literature homes are described as safe-havens, status symbols, influencing networks of friends and acquaintances, canvasses for projecting identity, tied to gentrification, segregation and much more. Previous literature tends to separate and focus on either economic/financial aspects or more symbolic values in housing, and/or separate its analysis to either owners of homes or buyers of homes. This study bridges the restricted focus in the previous literature by analyzing both buying and selling housing from an economical sociological viewpoint. The market and case is buying and selling housing in the County of Stockholm and since often the same household appear on both sides of the market close in time, a switch-role activity, the notion of switching and how the two roles relate to one and the same actor is central to explain. The explanation provided is further warranted in that this type of market, understudied in all types of previous literature, is a type of market which, not at least via internet platforms, is growing in volume. By ethnographic work, interviews and observations, buyers and sellers of housing are studied and analyzed. The theoretical concept of modes is used to create an understanding and explanation of housing buyers’ and sellers’ actions. The three research questions; what buyers and sellers do, how they do it, and why they do it are tied to the mode apparatus. Buyers are found to be disperse as their mode displays are plenty and varied. Some buyers are committed and certain of what they want in the future home and what the right price is, while some are eager to learn and find out what a good housing deal is. Others display modes of dreaming of future homes, play shop or try to learn what the proper way to buy housing really is or should be. Sellers are found to be much more coherent as group and as one mode display. The relatively set way in which sellers are provided a script on what to do and how to do it make them remarkably conformist. Sellers are found to show great trust in the institutional practice of the housing market. The lack of personal and subjective displays of identity and taste stand out. Sellers are found to display a general mode of involution, where culture and style tends to be ever watered down. Comparing the two sides of the market, buying and selling housing are therefore understood as two very different activities housed under one roof. Many actors appear on both sides of the market, as both buyer and seller close in time, but what the actor subjectively value as buyer and what influence their mode display, is not relevant when switching to selling. What is won for the buyer in the sense of having a distinct subjective mode is lost in uncertainty about what is the best deal on a unit of housing. Sellers on the other hand have little ability to display any real image and identity in their home for sale. However, what is lost in not having a distinct subjective mode display is then won in the certainty that following the script will secure the best possible deal. The study’s results point towards the value of further empirical work on switch-role markets to provide an extended knowledge of what is found here.