It’s notoriously expensive to buy a home in Switzerland and that’s unlikely to change any time soon as the latest data shows that residential property prices went up again in May. We look at where the cost of buying a home is rising the most.
It was 3.8 percent more expensive to buy a condominium – a commonhold apartment – in Switzerland in May than a year earlier, according to the latest asking price information compiled by online property platform ImmoScout 24, published on Friday.
And detached single-family homes cost 5.8 percent more than in May 2024.
A lack of supply is also fuelling demand, with prices rising faster in some parts of the country than others.
For example, properties are in scant supply in Zurich, one of Switzerland’s three most populous areas. This continues to push prices up in the canton – single-family detached homes jumped 3.9 percent in May compared to the previous month.
The median price for a four-room house in the canton stood at CHF 1.3 million at the time of writing, according to Immo Scout 24 data.
“Only about one in 20 properties on the market is located in this region,” said Martin Waeber, Managing Director Real Estate of the SMG Swiss Marketplace Group, which owns the property platform
Ticino, the Italian-speaking region in southern Switzerland, and the Central Plateau (Mittelland), also saw a noticeable price hike for this type of home last month. Prices climbed 1.2 and 1 percent, respectively.
If you’re in eastern Switzerland and looking to buy a single-family home, the news is better: property prices there fell by 2.1 percent in May. But if you’re after a condominium, unfortunately, it’s getting more expensive. Condominium prices in this part of the country climbed 2.7 percent.
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Condominium asking prices also went up in central Switzerland, rising 2.3 percent, and by about 1 percent in both Zurich and Ticino.
If you’re looking for a slightly cheaper condominium, then you need to head to the central and northwestern parts of the country where prices fell slightly.
And there’s a particularly large supply in the Lake Geneva region currently, according to ImmoScout 24.
“What’s particularly striking is that it has by far the largest number of condominium listings in Switzerland,” said Martin Waeber, Managing Director Real Estate of the SMG Swiss Marketplace Group.
There are also plenty of homes in the Central Plateau, with around half of the listed properties single-family homes, the ImmoScout 24 said.
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People are increasingly being priced out of buying homes in Switzerland, with a newspaper article reporting in April that even households bringing in more than CHF 200,000 a year couldn’t afford to buy in the country.
Traditionally, Swiss homeownership rates have been low compared to other countries, but they have been rising in the last decades due to a combination of low interest rates and steady buying interest from workers from neighbouring European countries.
In 2023, 35.8 percent of people owned their homes, up from 31.3 percent in 1990, according to data from the Federal Statistical Office.
This compares with around two-thirds of the population in the UK and the US who own their homes.
Vocab
Eigentumswohnung – condominium
Einfamilienhaus – single-family detached house
