How is the Queuing Time for Rent Controlled Apartments Affected by the Entry of a Private Housing Agency

Abstract

Housing companies in Sweden use waiting lists and queueing time to regulate the high demand for rental apartments. However, the average queueing time to obtain an apartment in public housing companies, such as Boplats Göteborg AB and Bostadsförmedlingen i Stockholm, has increased over the last decade. Using a novel dataset on rental characteristics in Gothenburg and a generalised linear mixed model, this study finds a positive association between the entrance of the private platform HomeQ in 2019 and the increase in queue time in public housing platforms. This study finds evidence that higher-income earners get allocated higher-quality apartments than lower-income earners in public housing agencies, where income is not an allocation criterion.