How buying a house has become beyond the reach of most Swiss

20 Minutes.

A couple with an annual income of CHF 100,000 won’t find anything in 65% of Swiss communes according to the newspaper.

After looking at 800,000 property advertisements on the website Homegate, 20 Minuten calculated an average home price increase of 36% between 2002 and 2015, far more than the 15% rise in salaries between 2002 and 2014. The rise in the cost of purchasing (+36%) was roughly 10% ahead of the increase in the cost of renting over the same period.

A family with two children, on an income of CHF 100,000, looking for a 4.5 room stand-alone house, will not find anything in two thirds of Swiss communes. A family with one child and income of CHF 90,000, will find the same property in only 12% of the country and nothing in greater Geneva or Zurich. 14 years ago the first family would have found such a home in 70% of Swiss communes.

For a childless couple with annual revenues CHF 200,000 the news is somewhat better. They could find something with 5.5 rooms over nearly all of Switzerland, with the exception of Zurich and communes where those with Switzerland’s highest incomes live.

The situation could change in the years to come warns Claudio Saputelli, a property specialist at UBS. The demand for property remains strong, and like all unregulated markets prices go up as a result, he explains. However we can already see the market running out of steam, and regions like Zurich and Geneva could warrant corrections as high as 20%.

Switzerland is probably little different to many other countries. The National Statistics Office in Britain calculated late last year that average home prices across England and Wales in 2014 were 8.8 times an average salary, with this multiple reaching an eye watering 24 in the London municipality of Westminster.

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