Hello everybody and welcome to this new post! Today, we are going to talk about how to find accommodation in Stockholm as a non-fee-paying international student. As explained in Martyna’s post on moving to Stockholm as an EU student, KTH does not grant accommodation to non-fee-paying students, unless they are part of a Joint Master’s programme. This means you will have to look for accommodation yourself, but don’t panic! We have got you covered.
There are two main ways to find housing in Stockholm. The first one is to apply to a housing queue, while the second is to find a sublet apartment from a private person.
Housing queues
In general, a housing queue works in this way: you subscribe to it and for every day that you spend in the queue you earn one credit day. When you apply for a house on the housing queue website, the house will be given to the applicant with the most credit days. That’s it!
There are two main housing queues that you can subscribe to: Bostadsförmedlingen and SSSB.
The first one is the municipal housing queue for the city of Stockholm. Everybody can subscribe to it (for 200 SEK/year), but they also offer some specific housing only for students and/or young people (between 18 and 25 years old). I personally don’t know anybody who got their accommodation through Bostadsförmedlingen, so I don’t know much more about it. It is worth subscribing to, though, because they have a lot of houses available for students! To subscribe to this housing queue, you’ll need a Swedish personal number (i.e. you will have to wait until you come here).
On the other hand, SSSB is way more popular amongst students in Stockholm. Almost everybody I know found housing through SSSB. It is a housing queue only for students, they publish new apartments twice a week, and they have, in general, very good locations. Also, their rents are way cheaper than you’d pay for a similar apartment in a similar location through the private market. Signing up to the SSSB queue is free, but to stay in their queue, you must also have an active membership with THS, the Student Union of KTH (cost: 365 SEK/year).
Without a THS membership, you can still start collecting credit days: SSSB offers the possibility to collect up to 90 credit days without being a member of a student union. After that period, you can pause your subscription for a maximum of 60 days. This means that you can start collecting credit days from now, pause your subscription once you get around 89 credit days, and then wait until you come here in August, activate your KTH account, and become a student union member to reactivate your SSSB account. I know, sounds a bit tricky, but the whole process is easier than it sounds 😅 You can also find an explanation of how the queue works on the SSSB website.
SSSB offers apartments and corridor rooms, which are the most popular form of accommodation here (you have your personal bedroom and private bathroom, but share the kitchen with other students). A nice perk of corridor rooms is that you get two months rent-free during summer. You usually need a minimum of 80/90 credit days for a corridor room (you’ll need much more for an apartment), although the average number of queue days to get an accommodation with SSSB– especially in more popular locations like Lappis – is 200-300 days. This means that people usually spend the first couple of months in accommodation found on the private market and then switch to SSSB once they have collected enough credit days.
Private market
Another way to find a house is to look for accommodation on the private market. Usually, renting from a private individual is more expensive than renting through a housing queue, but it is still a very viable and popular solution.
Personally, I have looked for housing on Blocket Bostad and Akademisk kvart, and I have had a positive experience with both. They are both safe and work in a similar way: you find a house you’re interested in, send a message to the owner, arrange a viewing through video-call, and then sign the contract. I am currently living in a house found through Akademisk kvart.
There are a couple of pieces of advice I would like to give you: first, even if they tend to be quite safe, NEVER pay anything in advance and ALWAYS ask for at least a video call with the owner, in which he shows you the house. No, receiving videos or photos is not enough: don’t trust anybody who refuses to have a video chat with you to show you the house. Also, work a lot on the message you’ll send to the owner: introduce yourself, say why you’re in Stockholm, and tell them a little bit about yourself. Try to keep it short and straight to the point – they usually receive a lot of messages.
Finally, I strongly suggest you use a specialised website to look for housing and not Facebook. Sadly, Facebook lacks any type of control over its users and it is super easy to find scammers and be scammed. As a rule of thumb: if it is too easy or too cheap to be real, then it probably isn’t real!
KTH has put together a dedicated page with more tips on how to find housing on your own in Stockholm, and avoiding scams. I highly recommend giving it a read!
That is all for today. I hope this post was useful for you! I remember being super anxious to find accommodation. In reality, it is not as hard as it seems when reading online! You just have to start early, be patient and don’t stress too much – everything will be alright!
Before leaving, remember to check out the upcoming webinars for newly admitted students at the New at KTH website, and don’t forget to check out Martyna’s last post on student discounts and my last post on budgeting tips!
See you next week!
// Lorenzo
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