New residential construction in many countries with rapid urban growth is often interrelated with smaller housing units being built. Sweden is not an exception. It is of interest to investigate the driving forces behind this tendency. Our presumption is that municipal land price policies and building permit regulations might play a certain role in this process. Contrary to previous studies that focus on the number of new dwelling units in housing construction, our purpose is to analyze the average size of new housing units and the factors that affect it on an aggregate level. We apply seemingly unrelated regressions for analysis of the average apartment size in new residential construction in the three largest metropolitan regions in Sweden as a function of the changes in population, apartment rent and prices, mortgage interest rates, land prices, and building permits per capita as a proxy for regulation. The unbalanced panel dataset includes the period between 1998 and 2017 and covers both the rental and the housing cooperative sectors. The analysis demonstrates that land prices and building policies along with market fundamentals are the underlying factors that affect the average size of an apartment in new residential construction in Sweden.

Since the size of the homeownership ratio differs significantly between countries, it is important to understand the mechanisms that lie behind the decrease or growth of certain sectors of the housing market such as rentals and housing cooperatives. The aim of this study is to analyze the long-term dynamics of the new residential supply in Sweden's three largest cities for the period of 1990-2020 and estimate in what way market fundamentals affect it through new construction and housing conversions. We apply panel data methodology and, in distinction to previous research, consider the development of the housing market (urban growth) as physical volume. The results demonstrate that structural changes are driven mainly by fundamental demand factors and that the displacement effect occurs primarily in the market's rental sector and not in the owner-occupied segment. The apartment price per square meter, together with mortgage interest rates, are the major driving factors in the process of converting dwellings into housing cooperatives. Fundamental variables that affect new construction in both the rental and housing cooperative sectors are population and income growth. In the presence of a rent control environment, the rent or price level does not contribute to adding new units to the total housing stock.

Purpose: This study examines the long term effects of macroeconomic fundamentals on apartment price dynamics in major metropolitan areas in Sweden and Germany. Design/methodology/approach: The main approach is panel cointegration analysis that allows to overcome certain data restrictions such as spatial heterogeneity, cross-sectional dependence, and non-stationary, but cointegrated data. The Swedish dataset includes three cities over a period of 23 years, while the German dataset includes seven cities for 29 years. Analysis of apartment price dynamics include population, disposable income, mortgage interest rate, and apartment stock as underlying macroeconomic variables in the model. Findings: The empirical results indicate that apartment prices react more strongly on changes in fundamental factors in major Swedish cities than in German ones despite quite similar development of these macroeconomic variables in the long run in both countries. On one hand, overreactions in apartment price dynamics might be considered as the evidence of the price bubble building in Sweden. On the other hand, these two countries differ in institutional arrangements of the housing markets, and these differences might contribute to the size of apartment price elasticities from changes in fundamentals. These arrangements include various banking sector policies, such as mortgage financing and valuation approaches, as well as different government regulations of the housing market as, for example, rent control. Originality/value: In distinction to the previous studies carried out on Swedish and German data for single-family houses, this study focuses on the apartment segment of the market and examines apartment price elasticities from a long term perspective. In addition, the results from this study highlight the differences between the two countries at the city level in an integrated long run equilibrium framework.

Article has an aim to investigate the effects of macroeconomic indicators such as population, income levels, GDP, housing stock, interest rate and rent levels on house prices. Analysis is done by applying panel data methodology on regional data for major cities in Germany and Sweden and by using yearly observations from 1995 to 2009. Results confirm that population, GDP, income, housing stock, interest rate and price levels for other market segments have effects on housing prices. However, these effects can be different for certain indicators depending on market segment and model used.

Foreign direct investments (FDI) have been one of the core features of globalization and the world economy over the past two decades. Statistical data shows that the level of FDI was continuously increasing during 2003-2007, but the directions and amount of such inflows differs significantly between the countries. Investments in Real Estate are just one of these inflows and European countries proved to be successful in this process. The objective of this study is to highlight theoretical and empirical findings about determinants of foreign direct investment in Real Estate in developed European countries. This paper first present and analyze existing scientific theories in this area with special attention to Real Estate investments, then focuses on assessing the relative significance of the factors that may attract FDI in Real Estate via a panel data regression analysis for a representative sample consisting of 15 OECD countries for 1996-2007. Results of the study suggest that certain variables such as size and growth of GDP, human capital and road infrastructure appear to be robust under different specifications. Significance of these factors estimates are also observed, confirming the relevant theoretical propositions. However certain differential variables that expected to have positive effect proved to be insignificant within the estimated data sample.

The realization of project requires collaboration between many different participants.  The majority of interactions happen on the project management team level. The general believe is that teams/groups can achieve more efficiency if they use effective instruments of risk management in their communication process. The aim of this study is to investigate how the level of communication risks varies between different project group development stages and how project manager can help project group to reach the maximum effectiveness of communication. The study analyzes different communication barriers that project group meets while working at project. The investigation was performed by using qualitative analysis method in four different projects of an engineering and consulting company involved with mining industries in South Africa. Interpersonal relationships were measured by FIRO model and communication risks were evaluated by a typical risk analysis method. Results of investigations show that communication risks are directly affected by the stage of group development and different factors of group development tend to synchronize with each other. The total amount of risks tends to decrease as group moves from one stage to another on the FIRO model. For improving communication process in project groups the dynamic nature of FIRO model should be considered. The risks will not be settled down unless the group stands in “Openness” stage and the group development stage is vulnerable to any changes; the environmental effects should be carefully followed for preventive action.