Blog, Our Swedish Journey
What makes Sweden so Great to live in? – Part 2 – House Selection
Feb
House Selection on a distance
In the following days, we were busy doing our online research. Because we lived 2,000 km away from the house at that time (in the Netherlands), we couldn’t just go and view the house in person. We did our research via Google, Google Maps, and Google Street View. For example, we checked where the nearest supermarket was, which turned out to be only 7 minutes from the house. The village also had amenities such as a pharmacy, a gas station, a gym, a flea market (loppis), and even a ski slope.
The nearest hospital was 30 minutes away from the house, located near a larger city, and 30 minutes was perfectly fine for us. We decided to send an email to the real estate agent.
After the house selection, you need to get in contact with the real estate agency. In Sweden, unfortunately, not all real estate agents want to do business with people who do not live in Sweden. This is because the government has created a system that is also difficult for locals to understand.
Laws against money laundering and controlling foreign payments mean that lots of agencies do not want the bother of this. They simply do not help in any way.
Further, you have the so-called personal identity number (personnummer). All residents of Sweden receive their own personalnumber. With this number, you can open a bank account, make payments, be registered as a resident in Sweden, have health insurance, pay taxes, and participate in daily life in Sweden. So payments for buying your house are preferably done over a Swedish bankaccount, but you can’t get it because you do not live there yet and you don’t have a personalnumber.
Our real estate agent, who is based in Örnsköldsvik, was very friendly. She was more than willing to help us place an offer on the house. Payment made from our dutch bankaccount, it was all arranged by her.
The house had been empty for five years; unfortunately, the previous owner had passed away. The family tried to keep up with the maintenance of the house (for which we are very grateful). The house had also been for sale for two years, but unfortunately, no one had the ambition to buy it. This was because there was quite a lot of work to be done on the house, such as painting, renovating, demolishing parts, mowing the grass, garden maintenance, and clearing the forest of trees that had fallen during a storm.
But despite all of that… we were in love.
More about how we made an offer on the house in our next blog.
Väntar med stort intresse på nästa blogginlägg. Menno och Kim är ett mycket välkommet par till vår bygd men visst skulle vi just nu önska oss ett mera Holländskt klimat.