Rent modelling of Swedish office markets : Forecasting and rent effects

Sammanfattning: The Swedish office markets has been emerging the last decade towards a higher rental level equilibrium. The aim of this study is to investigate the fundamental drivers of office rents and modelling of office rent forecasts in five Swedish office submarkets; Stockholm (2), Gothenburg (2) and Malmö (1). The methodology is a combination of economic theory and econometric analysis. The product is an econometric model. By using the estimated drivers, office rent forecasts are modelled and computed based on a vector autoregression-model. Our results show that office stock and vacancy, in lagged fashion, are statistically superior in explaining office rent development. OMX30 was evident to be the largest macro-driver in explaining office rent. The generated forecasts were significant and valid in the CBD-submarkets. However, the forecasts for the Rest of Inner City (RIC)-submarkets were not as precise. The results also show that the forecasts move more linearly compared to the actual office rent data that move more "step-wise".