Sweden: the debt-quota rule that was abolished
Sweden is a useful illustration of why the statutory-or-convention distinction has to be kept current. Until 1 April 2026 a debt above 4.5 times gross income forced an extra 1% of amortisation each year. That requirement was abolished, so no Swedish debt-to-income rule now binds, and shipping the old one would have been worse than shipping nothing: it would have told a borrower they had failed a test that no longer exists.
What remains is a stack of other constraints. The 85% loan-to-value cap limits the loan against the property. The basic amortisation requirement still obliges you to pay down the principal at a rate that depends on how highly leveraged you are. And every lender runs a KALP, a kvar att leva på, "left to live on", calculation, testing whether enough income survives a stressed mortgage payment plus a standardised set of living costs.
The 40% shown here is that KALP threshold expressed as a ratio, and it is a market convention rather than a rule: it is roughly where Swedish lenders' own assessments stop clearing. Income is assessed after tax, so enter take-home pay.
One asymmetry worth noting: the abolished rule was written against gross income, while the lenders' own tests work on net. When you read older Swedish commentary about a 4.5 times debt quota, it is measuring a different thing from the ratio this page shows you.