Can I Afford It? Mortgage Budget and Interest-Rate Stress Test at 6 Percent

You can afford it if the monthly cost still adds up when you calculate with an interest rate of 6 to 7 percent, not today’s rate. That is how the bank tests you, and it is how you should test yourself before you place a bid. So do not budget against the asking price or against the lowest rate you can find. Budget against interest plus amortization plus the BRF fee (avgift) or running costs, and check that there is still a buffer left over every month.

What the bank looks at

Every time you apply for a mortgage, the bank is required to run a credit check (kreditprövning), meaning it has to confirm that your finances can carry both the interest and the amortization on the loan. The most common method is a KALP calculation, short for Kvar Att Leva På, what is left to live on. The bank takes your income, subtracts the loan costs and standardised living costs for the household, and sees how much is left at the end of the month. If the result is negative, you usually will not get the loan, even if today’s rate on its own would be manageable.

Here is the key point: in the KALP calculation the bank does not use the rate you are offered today. It uses a notional rate (kalkylränta) that sits well above, usually around 6 to 7 percent, precisely to check that you could carry the loan if rates rise. So a budget that looks tight at the bank is actually protecting you: the margin is built in.

The rules that decide how much you can borrow

Since 1 April 2026 a new mortgage law applies, and it is more permissive than the earlier rules. These are the limits you calculate within:

Rule	What applies
Mortgage cap, bolånetak (new purchase)	90 percent of market value, so at least 10 percent deposit (kontantinsats)
Additional loan, tilläggslån (expanding an existing loan)	At most 80 percent of market value
Amortization at 50-70 percent loan-to-value (belåningsgrad)	At least 1 percent of the loan per year
Amortization above 70 percent loan-to-value	At least 2 percent of the loan per year
Strict amortization requirement (4.5 times income)	Removed from 1 April 2026

Two things have changed compared with before. The deposit (kontantinsats) is lowered from 15 to 10 percent, so you need less cash to get in. And the strict amortization requirement, the extra 1 percent that hit households with mortgages above 4.5 times gross annual income, has been removed. Amortization is now driven only by loan-to-value (belåningsgrad), not by how large your debt is relative to your income (skuldkvot). The maximum amortization requirement is therefore 2 percent per year, down from up to 3 percent before.

Do it yourself: stress-test at 6 to 7 percent

You can run the bank test before you even talk to the bank. The idea is simple: calculate against a rate that is higher than today, so the budget can withstand a rise.

Say you buy a home for 4,000,000 kr and have a 10 percent deposit, which is 400,000 kr. The loan is then 3,600,000 kr and the loan-to-value is 90 percent.

Item	Calculation	Per month
Interest (6 percent on 3,600,000 kr)	216,000 kr per year	18,000 kr
Interest after tax relief (ränteavdrag, 30 percent)	151,200 kr per year	12,600 kr
Amortization (2 percent on 3,600,000 kr)	72,000 kr per year	6,000 kr
BRF fee (avgift) or running costs	estimate	4,000 kr
Total		22,600 kr

This is not what you pay today if the rate is lower, it is the ceiling you want to be able to carry. If your household budget can take 22,600 kr a month with a reasonable buffer left over, you stand firm even if the rate climbs. If the budget already feels tight at 6 percent, that is a signal to go lower on price, raise the deposit or wait, not to stretch the numbers.

Calculate for your own home by swapping the purchase price and the avgift or running cost for the real figures, keep the 6 to 7 percent rate, and add the amortization based on the loan-to-value in the table above.

Compare the rate, it is free money

Once you know you can afford it, there is one more thing worth doing: compare banks. The gap between the best and worst mortgage rate on the market was around 0.23 percentage points, which sounds small but adds up to thousands of kronor a year on an ordinary mortgage. Comparing and negotiating is one of the few moments where a short effort gives a direct return every month for many years to come.

A word on resilience

The stress test is not bureaucracy for its own sake. Households’ ability to handle higher rates and higher unemployment is monitored every year, and the whole point is that you should cope even when it gets more expensive or if one income falls away. When your own budget can take a 6 to 7 percent rate with a buffer left over, you have built the same margin into your own purchase. At that point the question of whether you can afford it is no longer a worry, but a number you have worked out.