The situation in a city is particularly bad: if you are now looking for an apartment, you need luck

Because there are fewer and fewer apartments available all over Switzerland. This will become clear again when the Federal Statistical Office publishes figures on the number of vacancies per year from the beginning of June, early next week.

The outcome is already predictable: the number of vacant apartments and houses advertised for rent across Switzerland will fall for the third consecutive year in 2023. The only question is how much. UBS estimates the vacancy rate to be around 1.1 percent. Real estate service provider Wüest Partner’s estimate is just over 1 percent. Last year, this rate was 1.31 percent.

“The supply of rental flats declined throughout the year in almost all parts of the country, particularly in the Zurich and Central Switzerland regions. The gap between housing supply and demand is widening. Population is growing throughout Switzerland and at the same time new flats are being built,” says Maciej Skoczek, real estate specialist at UBS.

In the city of Zurich, for example, the supply is quite low: in the middle of the year only 144 flats were vacant and there were advertisements for rent. The vacancy rate in the city has always been very low and this rate is not so significant because many apartments that change tenants never stay vacant. That’s why they don’t show up in the statistics.

However, the situation still worsened. “Anyone looking for an apartment in the greater Zurich area today needs to be flexible and also look outside the city under certain circumstances,” says Maciej Skoczek. “The number of vacancies in Thurgau, Schaffhausen or the Zurich Oberland is much higher.”

Not long ago the market was still in balance

The vacancy rate of around 1.1 percent indicates an imbalance: Supply and demand are no longer in balance. So many tenants are competing for the same flat that rents are rising because of this shortage. At 1.27 percent, the market was balanced according to Wüest Partner’s calculations. If the rate is significantly higher, rents for vacant apartments should decrease; is significantly lower, it tends to increase.

In 2022, the situation across the country was still stable, with a vacancy rate of 1.31 percent. It was only in 2020 that federal statisticians announced a new record for vacancies: The barometer had hit a proud 1.8 percent at the time. Thousands of flats were empty across Switzerland.

Surplus turned into scarcity. Housing shortages, the nightmare scenario of the 1980s, no longer seem unthinkable. But it’s too early to announce this: 35 years ago, the vacancy rate was around 0.5 percent.