ABSTRACT
Sweden is presently a country with a housing shortage and the latest changes to the Planning and Building Act are intended to simplify an increase in house building. The Swedish Parliament thus decided in July 2014 to allow a new type of house, the so-called “Attefall house”, named after the responsible minister Stefan Attefall. In most cases only an application to the municipality followed by a starting permit from the building committee is needed without involving the neighbours, but in some special cases an ordinary building permit is still needed. The political reason for easing restrictions was to make it easier for house owners to build and let rooms in times of housing shortage, especially in the metropolitan areas. The national association of Swedish house owners thus calculated that there were 200,000 new possibilities of dwellings for rent. The Attefall house is however intended for second home use as well as permanent living. According to a questionnaire by Swedish Television, the number of applications related to independent complementary dwellings is negligible (19 applications total) in the three greatest cities in Sweden: Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö during the first year of the reform. The majority of the 5,150 approved applications are connected to guest houses and related developments such as second homes. The highest level of interest has been in municipalities well known for large numbers of second homes. The chapter discusses the outcome in these kinds of coastal areas.
