Apartments to rent are the cheapest in these big cities

Interest rate cut to tenants has been postponed. The benchmark interest rate remained at 1.25% on Wednesday. This should only increase during the summer months. And with it existing leases.

Asking rents – that is, the rental prices of the apartments currently offered on the market – have already risen. And keep climbing. This means that looking for a new apartment is often more expensive than staying at home. Of course, it depends on where you are looking for an apartment.

The chances of those looking for flats are high, especially in small towns and not in big Swiss cities. Comparison platform Comparis took a close look at the ten largest cities in Switzerland in the recently released Rental Report 2023.

City flat less than 2000 francs

But even in cities there are 4.5-room apartments for less than 2,000 francs. So Biel, Lugano and St. Gallen. In the city of Gallus, rental prices are relatively cheap because housing there, as they say, is often outdated. Biel BE also has many old apartments. It will be difficult to force higher rents as income is low there.

The cheapest 4.5-room apartments are in the canton of Solothurn in Mümliswil. The average monthly rent in 2022 is just under 1200 francs. Smaller, cheaper apartments are available, for example, for 1,000 francs in Biasca TI. And in Le Locle NE, tenants pay an average of 785 francs for a 2-room flat.

Things get expensive in Zurich and Geneva

Such prices seem impossible in the city of Zurich: a 4.5-room apartment here costs an average of 2,992 francs in 2022. In 2018, the same flat was 100 francs cheaper.

Only in Geneva it is even more expensive: here you pay 3,222 francs for a 4.5-room apartment of 90 to 120 square meters. However, this is actually the lowest rental price in the last five years. The rent for the same flat in 2021 was exactly 3500 francs.

For smaller apartments – 3,5 and 2 rooms – rental prices in Zurich and Geneva are almost the same. It ranges from 1690 to 2500 francs. Rents for small apartments increased the most in Zurich. However, rent prices for larger apartments increased the most in Winterthur ZH.

Asking for rent has already become more expensive this year. This is the conclusion of the Swiss Real Estate Proposal Index collected by ImmoScout24 and IAZI.

Falling rents only in Ticino

In February, rents in Switzerland increased by an average of 3.8 percent compared to the previous year. Unsurprisingly, this is where rents have risen the most in Zurich, at 2.5 percent. Rents at the Zug hotspot also rose 1.7 percent.

In Ticino alone, rents fell by a minimum of -0.1 percent. In other regions, rents increased between 0.3 and 0.9 percent.

On the other hand, when it comes to residential property, purchase prices have hardly changed. In February, detached house prices fell by 0.2 percent. Apartments are 0.4 percent more expensive. The average price per square meter required for detached houses is 7407 francs, for condominiums 8499 francs.

Source :Blick