In 2008 just about 200 passive house dwellings were built in Sweden, in beginning of 2009 the amount doubled and reached in the end of 2009 about 900 dwellings (http://www.passivhuscentrum.se). The growth is clear, however still not that fast as it might be expected. Uncertainties of cost and...

Buildings fundamental goal is to deliver safe shelter and good indoor climate for the occupants. Creating the thermal comfort begins with modelling, which is based on mathematical descriptions of the designing building, its surroundings, and regional clim

This paper examines the importance of environmental factors in the residential property market and investigates avowed willingness to pay for green apartments. The paper presents results from a quasi-experimental study and survey responses from 733 occupants of green and conventional buildings....

The aim of this paper is to propose a new structure for classifying contract types and payment methods. Concerning the procurement contract types the first important feature is the stepwise structure with three main steps in the contract design: (1) should the contract only include construction...

The first aim of this paper is to clarify the meaning of moral hazard in the context of construction procurement. Two important points are that typically there is a double moral hazard problem, as the client also can “misbehave” in a number of ways, and that both internal moral hazard...

In this comment it is argued that Christophers´ misunderstands the nature of the post war housing model in Sweden. This was actually a market friendly model where rent and price regulations were seen as something temporary and that an increase in supply was the most important policy. It is...

The standard view is that rent regulation leads to reduced maintenance as the landlord will be able to find tenants at the regulated rent even if the level of maintenance is low. In this article it is shown that the rent regulation system in Sweden interacts with a contract structure where the...

A large part of the Swedish housing stock was built between 1955 and 1975 and there is currently a large need for renovations. In this article the focus is on apartment renovations in cooperative housing where the individual owner of the apartment is responsible for renovations. Lack of...

It has been reported that productivity development in the construction sector has been very low compared to other sector. Measuring productivity is however not easy and it might have been underestimated due to deficiencies in the index that is used when the value added in current prices is...

The first part of the study concerns the concept ”sustainable renovation”. Four parts are identified and then used in the case study: environmental sustainability (including energy efficiency and choice of materials); social sustainability (interpreted as that the current tenants should be...