Does PropTech Facilitate Liquidity in the Property Transaction Process? : A Qualitative Study on the Swedish Real Estate Market

Sammanfattning: This thesis is an exploratory qualitative study aiming at exploring and advancing the current knowledge of the Swedish PropTech industry. In this study, the investigations will mainly focus on how the Swedish PropTech companies improve the liquidity, for instance, higher supply, lower transaction costs and more accessible access, in the property transaction process. Besides, the impacts of Covid-19 on these companies and the challenges and opportunities they foresee in the post-covid situation will be investigated. To answer the research questions, first of all, five semi-structured interviews with the experts from the Swedish PropTech industry were held to gather their insights into the unique functionalities facilitated by PropTech in the property transaction process. Besides, the method of reviewing industry reports was applied to complement the findings from the interviews. To measure liquidity in the market, five main categories of measurement metrics, including (1) transaction costs, (2) volume-based measures, (3) price impact, (4) time-based measures, and (5) return-based measures, are considered. After that, the collected data material was compared and analysed by means of thematic analysis with the support of the query tool “NVivo” to explore the answers to the research questions “how do the Swedish PropTech companies facilitate liquidity in the property transaction process”, “what are the impacts of Covid-19 on these companies, and what challenges and opportunities do they foresee in the future” and “what is the future of the PropTech industry”. Lastly, by building a novel tool, this thesis could contribute to the research field of PropTech and give more instructions to the Swedish real estate market when adapting to innovations in the real estate industry.