Abandoned houses are occasionally visited by curious intruders. Some are nothing but content with photography. Others steal and break. Eventually, the visits start to make an impression on the houses.

- It can be mentally stressful to have a demolished house as a neighbor and have to see it every day. In addition, it can lower the value of the houses in the neighborhood, says Lars Brask at the Housing Authority, who investigated the question of what to do with abandoned houses.

Even for municipalities, demolished buildings and uninhabited plots can cause problems. If the decay goes far they can turn into a danger to both people and the environment.

But despite the fact that the buildings are virtually useless, ownership is strong. Often both the municipality and neighbors fail to force repairs or demolition, as the owners are difficult to get hold of. The result is that the houses are left standing and fall even more.

And in cases where you finally manage to push through a demolition decision, the economy often comes into the picture and puts a stop, Lars Brask says.

- Demolishing a residential building with all that it entails by source sorting can cost up to half a million kronor. It is true that the property owner is obliged to pay, but there are no measurable assets end up with the taxpayer.

For a municipality with many deserted houses, it can quickly become expensive. And that there are municipalities that have problems were fixed in 2015, when Boverket investigated the issue.

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The investigators proposed, among other things, "to facilitate the service of demolition orders". The purpose is to get around the situation where a homeowner can stop demolition by making himself ineffective.

Another proposal is to pay state aid to the municipalities that are affected by the costs of handling abandoned houses and plots.

The investigation has now been on the government's table for several years without anything happening. According to the departmental officers with whom SVT spoke, the Swedish Board of Housing will eventually be commissioned to investigate certain proposals further.

In Sweden, in practice, it costs almost nothing to leave a property abandoned. Often these are inherited houses in sparsely populated areas with such a low value that the owner does not think it is worth the trouble to sell, despite the fact that there are stakeholders.

Instead, the houses may continue to fall into the family's possession, along with all the memories.

In places where many houses are uninhabited, service and job opportunities eventually tend to disappear. Those who try to stay as permanent residents are getting harder to live together and even more houses are at risk of being abandoned.

In Norway, they try to counteract this development with something called residential: In order to buy a house you also commit to living in it. At present, 47 municipalities have chosen to introduce housing. The goal is to prevent year-round housing from being turned into holiday homes that are empty for much of the year.

In both Norway and Denmark, duty of use is also applied. Anyone who owns a year-round residence may be required to ensure that it is used at least 180 days a year. If this does not happen, the municipality will be entitled to rent the property - regardless of the owner's consent.

So far, similar plans have not been put forward by Swedish politicians. Nor is it about to start taxing uninhabited houses - proposals put forward in sparsely populated debates as a way of "forcing" the empty houses on the property market.