Finding a place to live in Switzerland is difficult. Home availability is low and prices are high. On 13 September 2021, the Federal Statistical Office published data showing a sharp drop in the number of vacant homes since 2020, a development that will make home hunting harder. On 1 June 2021, there were 71,365 vacant […]
Federal Council supports elimination of imputed rents for Swiss home owners
In Switzerland, home owners must add a fictional or imputed rent to their taxable income, which is calculated based on the home’s floor area. Proposals to eliminate imputed rent have been around for sometime. This week, the Federal Council came out in support of a plan to eliminate it put forward earlier by a commission […]
Risk of parts of Swiss real estate market overheating, says UBS
The latest UBS Swiss Real Estate Bubble Index published this week shows several regions at risk of overheating property prices. The regions highlighted as exposed include Basel, Lausanne, Vevey, parts of the Vaud Alps, Lugano, Nidwalden, Luzern, Zug and the Zurich region, all parts of Switzerland where there is plenty of high paid work. Lausanne, […]
Immigrants pay higher rent than native Swiss
Those with a migration background in Switzerland are on average financially worse off than those without, according to data from the Federal Statistical Office (FSO). And those with a migration background pay on average 10% more per square metre of living space than the rest of the population. In Switzerland, around 20% of those with […]
Renters charged fees to view apartments in Geneva
Some agencies in Geneva are exploiting the city’s tight property market by charging people money just to view apartments, according to a report by RTS. A practice described as parasitic by ASLOCA, a rental association, involves an agency contacting those who have placed adverts for vacant apartments and offering them their services. The agency promises […]
Only 36% of Swiss own their homes
Recently published statistics show that 36% of homes are owned by those who live in them, a rate that falls to 12% in municipalities with more than 100,000 residents. Swiss municipalities with the highest rates of home ownership (37%) have between 10,000 and 15,000 residents, a rate exceeding the smallest municipalities of less than 10,000 […]
Swiss crime down sharply during first wave of pandemic
Statistics from Switzerland’s Federal Statistical Office show a dramatic fall in the number of crimes during the first wave of the pandemic in 2020. Across all of 2020, 421,678 crimes were recorded, 2.4% fewer than the year before. Drug crimes (-9%), immigration crimes (-12%) and burglaries (-10%) were all down. At the same time violent […]
Swiss residential property prices on the rise
After falling by 0.8% in the first quarter of 2020, average Swiss residential property prices have rebounded, rising in every quarter since to deliver an annual 2020 increase of 2.5%. Average residential property prices rose by 1.4% in Q2, by 0.2% in Q3 and by 2.3% in the final quarter of 2020. Across the year, […]
No relief for Swiss renters
Every three months the benchmark interest rate used to set Swiss rents is reviewed. If it goes down some renters can request a decrease in rent. This time it remained at 1.25%. The last time it dropped was March 2020 when it fell from 1.5% to 1.25%, its lowest level since the measure began in […]
Swiss home prices rose over the third quarter of 2020
Over the third quarter of 2020, home prices in Switzerland rose by an average of 0.2%. However, the prices of some homes rose while others fell. According to figures published by Switzerland’s federal statistical office, the price of individual houses rose 1.1% while the price of apartments fell by 0.6%. The price rise for individual […]
