Background and problem: The financial crisis 2008-2009 came out from an over-optimism among those who took the real estate loans in the U.S., and especially so-called subprime loans. After the 2008 financial crisis, it has become a global uncertainty in the financial market with low growth, and even financial crises in the euro countries have appeared. The real estate industry is a capital-intensive industry where companies have a high leverage to implement their investment. This means they have a larger proportion of debt relative to equity than companies in other industries. As investments require a lot of capital, real estate companies become dependent on having a working relationship with both the banks and the capital market. The dense, connective link between the companies and markets means that real estate companies is strongly affected by economic downturns and financial crises. According to the financial crisis in 2008 and the Swedish real estate companies’ situation, we thought this was interesting to investigate further.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to compare Swedish listed real estate companies before and after the financial crisis of 2008.

Theory: The theoretical framework includes theories of capital structure and financial ratios. The “Capital Structure section” comprised partly of a conceptual explanation of capital structure, and the most common theory models that deal with ditto. The financial ratios we are focusing on are particularly relevant to real estate companies in Sweden.

Method: The paper is written with a hypothetical-deductive method containing a quantitative and a qualitative part in form of calculations of financial ratios (secondary data) and interviews (primary data). We will do a research containing 14 of Sweden's largest real estate companies that are included in sector 8600 Real Estate on the Stockholm Stock Exchange (NASDAQ OMX Nordic). We will even do four interviews with Nordea, Swedbank, Fabege and Hufvudstaden to get a larger width of the paper. Our method section also describes the collection of data, processing of data, reliability and validity. The quantitative part deals with the years 2005-2007 and 2009-2012.

Results and conclusions: We concluded that the return on equity has decreased, and the total result of the Swedish property companies on the Stockholm Stock Exchange has increased since the financial crisis of 2008. Otherwise, there has not been a significant change in the other financial ratios. The interviews led to an understanding of why there has been no major change in income statements, but also what has really changed in banks and property companies after the financial crisis of 2008.