Landlord-tenant contracts in sweden and the united states: A test of alternative models of housing

The landlord-tenant environment for each nation’s housing stock is affected by societal values about the concept of housing and what relationship individuals and governments should have towards housing. In this paper, we compare alternative models of housing and their attendant landlord-tenant provisions, given the evidence found in Sweden and the United States. Housing, viewed as a pure private good, where individuals can contractually obtain various rights which are attached to the physical asset by custom or law, is compared with housing as a societal entitlement, where social justice dictates that individuals are endowed with the right to obtain adequate housing independent of its cost or individual income. In this article, we test two variants of these models by examining five of the major landlord-tenant relationships for dwellings in Sweden and the United States. The results reveal some interesting insights and provide several implications for future research.