Moving to Sigtuna: what living here is like

The neighbourhoods

The old town, Malmen, Munkholmen, Til, Sjudargården, Stadsängar, Steninge slottsby and more. What sets them apart, what they cost, links to Booli.

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Commuting

Stockholm in an hour, Arlanda in fifteen minutes, Uppsala in 35. Bus, train, car and what it costs in time every day.

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The housing market

Prices, price trends and how Sigtuna town compares with the municipality. With figures from Svensk Mäklarstatistik.

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What is good

• The setting. Wooden town, water, ruins and a street from the 900s.
• The size. Ten thousand people means you recognise faces on Stora gatan after a year. Children cycle to school and to friends on their own.
• The location. Arlanda in fifteen minutes makes Sigtuna one of few small towns where you can work internationally and be home for dinner. Stockholm in an hour. Uppsala in half an hour.
• The water and the woods. Lake Mälaren outside the door, free fishing, skating in winter, nature reserves within cycling distance.
• The schools. Municipal schools from reception to year 9 in town, Waldorf in Rävsta, the SSHL boarding school with IB. Upper secondary in Märsta or Stockholm.
• The culture. Museum, the Sigtuna Foundation, concerts in St Mary's, author evenings, a cinema. A lot for a town this size.

What is less good

• The prices. Sigtuna town is well above the municipal average, and villas near the water cost as much as in Stockholm's inner suburbs. Supply is small, especially of flats.
• No train station. Everything goes via Märsta. If you commute daily to Stockholm, the bus connection adds 20 minutes each way. Driving to Märsta station and taking the train from there is what many do. Both the commuter train and Mälartåg leave from Märsta: the commuter train takes about 40 minutes to Stockholm City on an SL ticket, Mälartåg 18 minutes on its own ticket.
• Winter. From November to March the town is quiet. Several restaurants close on weekdays, the tourists are gone, and you realise that the town hall, the pool and the upper secondary school are in Märsta.
• The tourists. Summer weekends and Advent fill Stora gatan. If you live centrally you notice. In the residential areas you do not notice at all.
• Arlanda. Depending on where you live and how the wind sits, you hear the planes. Swedavia's flight path maps show where the planes go in different winds, and Flightradar24 shows them live. Listen for yourself before buying, at different times of day.
• A municipality with two towns. Sigtuna town and Märsta are different places with different conditions, and most municipal services are in Märsta.

Who moves here

Families from Stockholm who want a house, woods and a school the children can walk to. People who work at or around Arlanda. Couples who sold the house in Stockholm and want a flat in a town with water. And some who lived here before, moved away and came back.

Practicalities when you move

1. Decide on the area before the house. The differences between the old town, the villa areas and the outskirts are bigger than between individual houses. See the areas page.
2. Test the commute on an ordinary Tuesday in November, not a Saturday in June.
3. Check school places early. The proximity principle applies to municipal schools. Independent ones have queues.
4. Read the practical page for what needs sorting the week after the move.
5. Subscribe to the newsletter. It is the quickest way into what is going on.