Buying your first home: step by step

The hard thing about a first home purchase is rarely any single step. It is that everything is presented at once, by different people, in words you have not heard before, while you feel you should decide fast.

Here is the same thing in the order it actually happens. Each step has a guide of its own if you want to dig, but the list reads as is. The whole chain from contract to keys is also in the buying process step by step.

First: what you may borrow

Start with pre-approval. It usually takes days, is free, and without it you do not know which homes you look at. Many spend months at viewings in a price range they never could reach.

Two rules decide how much loan you get. The down payment is the part you must hold yourself, at least 10 percent of the price since 1 April 2026. The amortisation requirement decides how much you must pay down monthly: 2 percent of the loan per year borrowing more than 70 percent of value, 1 percent between 50 and 70 percent. The extra requirement for loans over 4.5 times income is gone. The second matters more than it sounds: amortisation, not interest, usually steers what you handle monthly.

The bank also calculates with a stress-test rate several points above the rate you actually get. That is why pre-approval often lands lower than you worked out yourself. The stress rate is no forecast, it is the bank’s safety margin, and keeping one of your own is wise.

Pre-approval is no promise about that particular home. The bank judges anew with a place in hand, and for a tenant-owner apartment they also eye the association. Pre-approval normally lasts three to six months and renews.

What the home costs monthly

The listing price is a one-time sum. What you live with is monthly cost, and it consists of interest, amortisation, fee and running costs.

Calculate with a higher rate than today’s. The question of fixed or variable rate will be asked by the bank, and no answer fits all. Do not forget the interest deduction, returning 30 percent on interest up to 100,000 kronor a year and making actual cost lower than the calculation looks.

A worked example. You buy a tenant-owner apartment for 3,000,000 kronor with a 3,800 monthly fee. You choose 15 percent down, 450,000 kronor, more than the required 10 percent, and borrow 2,550,000 kronor, so 85 percent of value. Amortisation is 2 percent per year, 51,000 kronor, or 4,250 a month. At an assumed 3.5 percent rate, interest is 89,250 kronor a year, 7,438 a month, and after deduction 5,206. Add the 3,800 fee and own running for power and home insurance around 900.

The sum is 16,388 kronor a month before deduction and 14,156 after. Of that, 4,250 is amortisation, savings in the home but still due monthly. If rates rise to 5 percent, the interest part grows roughly 3,200 a month before deduction. That figure, not today’s rate, must fit your budget.

At the viewing

Go to more viewings than you think you need, even at homes you know you do not want. You learn price levels faster in five viewings than fifty listings.

Bring a list and go through the same things every time: kitchen and bathroom condition, windows, sound from neighbours and street, storage, where the afternoon sun stands. Ask what was renovated, when, and by whom. Photograph what you doubt. After three viewings everything blurs together, and notes are all that tell them apart.

Also ask whether bids exist already, how many attended viewings, and when the seller wants moving day. The answers say more about what the home will cost than the asking price does. A home with many at the viewing and early moving day is a home where bidding starts the same evening. To skip that situation entirely, looking at what sells outside the open market is worth it, where tempo is often calmer.

Ask what final prices were in the building or block. The agent knows, and the gap between asking and final price in that area is the best clue to what this home will cost. How a home is valued explains how the agent reached the asking price.

Tenant-owner apartments: read the annual report

Buying a tenant-owner apartment, ask for the association’s annual report and read it. Sounds duller than it is, and the four figures that matter are in the annual report guide.

Most important is debt per square metre. A highly indebted association pays much interest, and when rates rise the fee must rise. The rise hits your monthly cost directly, and you cannot opt out. Also eye whether pipe replacement, roof or facade are done or lie ahead. Coming pipe work often means both higher fees and months of construction.

Check what the fee includes. With heating and water in, 3,800 kronor is a wholly different fee than paying those yourself on top. And ask whether the association charges transfer and mortgage-registration fees. Small amounts, but they land on the moving-day bill.

Houses: pay for the survey

Buying a house, the survey is the single most important thing you pay for. You hold a duty to inspect under the Land Code, and what you could have found you rarely get compensated for afterwards.

With a seller survey, read it, but remember the seller ordered it. Order your own if anything is unclear, or ask for a survey clause in the contract if bidding runs too fast. Also ask for an energy certificate, last year’s running costs, and facts on easements. What applies if something still appears afterwards is in hidden defects after purchase.

Bidding

Decide your upper limit before bidding starts, and write it down. The limit should come from what you handle monthly, not from what you managed to think in the moment.

How bidding works goes through the rules, and bidding strategies for buyers how you can place your bids. Bids bind neither you nor the seller, and the seller need not pick the highest. But there is no cooling-off: once the contract is signed, the purchase binds.

A common beginner mistake is raising in small steps to avoid overpaying. It lengthens bidding and gives the others time to think. Another is raising in big steps to scare them off. It sometimes works, but you pay for it. Decide in advance how you raise, and stick to it. And place no bid at all before pre-approval covers the amount, because a bid you cannot finance is a bid you must withdraw in front of everyone.

Two things strengthen your bid at no extra cost: pre-approval already ready and a flexible moving day. Ask the agent what the seller wants, and adapt what you can. Unsure whether price ran away, a fast check sits in paying too much for the home.

Between contract and moving day

Usually one to three months pass. Meanwhile the deposit is paid, the loan finalised, and a move planned. The whole chain is in the buying process step by step.

The deposit is normally ten percent of the price and due within days of the contract, to the agent’s client funds account. Lacking the full down payment that day, deposit loans exist, and owning something to sell, bridging loans are the corresponding fix.

The bank now wants the contract, the property description and, for tenant-owner apartments, the association’s annual report. Only then is the actual loan granted. Take out home insurance, or house insurance for houses, from moving day. File the change-of-address and move power and broadband subscriptions the week before. What people usually forget is in the moving checklist.

Costs beyond the price

Buying a house adds title registration and mortgage deeds. Title registration costs 1.5 percent of the price in stamp duty plus a filing fee to Lantmäteriet. New mortgage deeds cost 2 percent of the amount plus filing fee. With deeds already in place you take them over with no new duty. On a 4-million house with 1 million in new deeds, that is 80,000 kronor needed beyond the down payment. Details are in title registration and mortgage deeds explained.

Buying a tenant-owner apartment, no title registration exists. The association instead often charges a transfer fee and a mortgage-registration fee, together usually a few hundred to just over a thousand kronor. Count moving costs and first purchases too. It usually becomes more than believed.

If you find nothing

Many first-time buyers search months without placing a single bid. Often because they only see what sits out the day they look.

Instead describe what you seek and let homes find you. A property watch catches new places ongoing, and part of everything sold never goes out as a listing at all. How that part of the market works is in finding the home before listing.

And stuck between tenant-owner apartments and houses, or wondering what a rental really gives in comparison, the differences sit together in home types: tenant-owner, rental and freehold.