Switzerland Today

Greetings from Bern,

If you’ve ever struggled in search of a new flat or house, then you’ll be able to spare a thought for those stuck in the hot Swiss housing market. Not only is vacancy low, but property prices and rents are high as demand outstrips supply, especially in urban areas. Could swiping for your next home be the answer to people’s housing woes?

We discuss this and more in today’s Briefing.

Keystone

In the news: two parents of an Islamic State fighter go on trial, a well-attended Locarno Film Festival, repaired Gotthard base tunnel back on track, Yann Sommer quits the national football team, and another fatality on the Matterhorn.

• The trial of two parents accused of financially supporting their son who left Switzerland to fight for Islamic State (IS) in Syria in 2015 began at the Federal Criminal Court on Monday.
• Around 152,000 movie fans flocked to the 77th Locarno Film Festival that ended on Saturday. That’s a 3.5% increase from a year ago, festival organisers revealed.
• The first trains passed without incident through the Gotthard base tunnel, the world’s longest railway tunnel, following a year of repairs after it suffered serious damage from a derailment in August 2023. 
• After 12 years and 94 international matches, goalkeeper Yann Sommer is leaving the Swiss national football team. Playing for the country, he said, had been an “honour and a privilege”.
• A mountaineer died while descending the Matterhorn on Friday, having fallen 800 metres onto a glacier. The incident comes after two others lost their lives last Wednesday on the iconic peak near Zermatt in southern Switzerland.

Keystone / Gaetan Bally

Swipe for a new, bigger apartment

It matters little if you’re a prospective buyer or renter, pining for a flat or a detached house: in Switzerland, the housing market is brutal. Demand far outstrips supply.

Just last week Raiffeisen, a major mortgage lender, reported more Swiss are actually keen to buy property as the Swiss National Bank cuts its key interest rates. With mortgages now less expensive than they were a year or two ago, buying has become more advantageous than renting.

The problem, of course, is that it’s a seller’s market. Fewer new homes are going up – the number of building permits issued reached an all-time low in 2023 – and the vacancy rate is falling. Raiffeisen projects vacancy will drop below 1% nationwide, down from 1.2% last year. House prices, therefore, are expected to continue to rise in the mid-term. Rents, meanwhile, were already 6.4% higher in the second quarter of 2024 compared to the same time last year.

In Lausanne, at least, people desperate to move house have been thrown a lifeline by city authorities, Swiss public television RTS reportsExternal link. They’ve started a pilot project for the exchange of apartments that targets 1,260 households: families who are looking for a bigger place and older residents looking to downsize.

One key aspect of the project is that the rent of each flat remains the same when households exchange residences. Usually, when a flat comes on the market, the landlord uses the opportunity to increase the rent, which discourages a lot of empty-nesters from downsizing. “Today, no one will agree to go from a five-room flat to a three-room place by paying twice the rent,” Christian Dandrès of the renters’ association ASLOCA tells RTS.

A similar project in Zurich through a private platform created in Germany and dubbed “the Tinder of real estate” has led to 5,300 apartment exchanges, according to the head of Tauschwohnung. Work is now underway to see if the app can be developed in other Swiss cities.

Exchanging apartments, though, is not a long-term solution in the eyes of some. “To fight against high rents,” says Frédéric Dovat of the Swiss association of real-estate professionals, “we have to build more, and voters have to stop systematically opposing new construction projects.”

Keystone / Michael Buholzer

The Swiss media’s long goodbye to Yann Sommer

The biggest news this busy Monday is, of course, the departure of goalkeeper Yann Sommer from the Swiss “Nati”. Sports journalists are wasting no time in waxing lyrical about Sommer, who appeared in 94 international outings for the national team over the last 12 years.

As it bids the 35-year-old adieu, newspaper Le Temps calls himExternal link the “Roger Federer of football”. It’s the end of summer – or rather, the end of “Sommertime”, the paper goes on to say (I’m not making this up!)

“Some liked him because he’s cute, others because he’s polite and measured, and all because time and again his saves saved the Nati,” Le Temps quips.

Tabloid Blick, meanwhile, devotes a page to a play-by-playExternal link of Sommer’s press conference in Zurich, where he announced his retirement.

Over on Swiss public television SRF, there’s an online photo galleryExternal link highlighting Sommer’s accomplishments going back to his very first international appearances. Particularly striking – besides his athletic prowess, of course – is the display of goalkeeper uniforms in all the (neon bright) colours of the rainbow over the years. Curiously, his headband has remained stubbornly black.

In all seriousness, chapeau to a man who says deciding to leave the Nati was difficult in part because of the fans – there’s nothing like celebrating victories with your supporters. Now, he says, he’ll be supporting the national team alongside them.