Apartment living is common throughout Sweden but in particular in the cities. It is very rare to find a house in a city centre location so your decision about what type of accommodation you want needs to reflect where you want to be based.

The advantage of apartments is that the running costs are normally a lot lower than houses and that they can offer the flexibility of living centrally – if you can afford it.

The most critical things to look for when trying to find an apartment to buy or rent are the floor area (boyta or boarea) and the number of rooms (rum). The number of rooms does not include the bathroom (badrum) or kitchen (kök) but does include both bedrooms and living space. Apartments will be referred to as a oner (etta) or a twoer (tvåa) and so on, depending on the number of rooms available. Balconies (balkonger) can also make a big difference to the price. In addition to the living space, you will probably have access to storage space either in the basement or the attics so find out how spacious this is.

Other facilities that are often available either in the building include a laundry, a bicycle room, a stroller room and sometimes even a function room or a guest apartment that can be rented for visiting family and friends. Function rooms are more common in buildings from the 70s onwards and while guest apartments exist they are not particularly common.

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You may also want to consider which floor the apartment is on (våning), whether there is a lift (hiss) and things like heating (uppvärming) and how well glazed the windows (fönster) are. There is no single glazing so this will just be whether they are double or triple glazed. Actually most Swedish apartments and houses are incredibly well insulated sometimes to the point of being stuffy so this is rarely a concern. It may also be interesting to find out when the property was built (byggnadsår), along with whether any renovation and improvements have taken place.