More Swiss rental flats advertised for first time in three years

More rental apartments advertised for the first time in three years Keystone-SDA

For the first time in three years, more flats have been advertised for rent on real estate portals in Switzerland. Between October 2023 and September 2024, 384,000 apartments were advertised across the country.

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This is around 20,000 properties or 5.6% more than in the same period last year. This is the result of the online flat index OWI published on Tuesday, which is calculated by the Swiss Real Estate Institute on behalf of the Swiss Real Estate Association and the Swiss Homeowners Association. Despite the increase in the volume of adverts, the average insertion time has fallen by two days to 25 days.

A shorter insertion period despite more advertisements indicates an increasing demand for rental flats, according to the report. One reason for this may be that tenants are reacting to rising rents by moving house. Due to the two-time increase in the reference interest rate from 1.25% to 1.75%, the increase in rents is significantly higher than inflation during this period (0.6%).

More relocations

The increase in rents in combination with sometimes high additional payments for ancillary costs led to more tenants moving to a cheaper apartment. In return, they would forgo living space or move to cheaper, more rural regions, wrote the Swiss Real Estate Association. However, the flats that become vacant are easily absorbed by rising demand throughout Switzerland.

+ Almost 700,000 people moved house in Switzerland in 2023

The increase in the volume of advertisements and a shorter advertising period is also evident in most cantons. The number of advertised rental apartments has risen in 21 out of 26 cantons. At the same time, only eight cantons saw longer advertising times, most notably Appenzell Inner Rhodes (plus three days) and Neuchâtel (plus four days).

In contrast, insertion times were shorter in 18 cantons. This is most evident in Ticino with a decrease of 18 days.

The range of advertising times between the cantons is extremely wide, according to the report: in canton Zug, the flat rental market had dried up with ten insertion days. In cantons Basel Country, Appenzell Outer Rhodes, Solothurn, Neuchâtel and Jura, on the other hand, there was an oversupply of rental apartments with insertion times of between 35 and 53 days.

Translated from German by DeepL/ts

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