Falling vacancies are driving the strongest rental growth since 2014
The Swiss asking rents have risen by 1 percent within a year. Falling vacancies resulted in the strongest rental growth since 2014. This is evident from the homegate.ch rental index. Rents rose particularly strongly in mountain regions.
The rent index compiled by the real estate marketplace homegate.ch from TX Group in cooperation with Zürcher Kantonalbank ( ZKB ) shows a 1 percent increase in asking rents in Switzerland for the past year. According to a press release , this is the strongest rental growth since 2014. The development varied from region to region. While the mountain regions increased in 2021, growth slowed in many centers. The index rose again in December 2021 compared to the previous month by 0.3 points to 116.4 points. That is an increase of 1.04 percent compared to the previous year.
According to the press release, the Swiss rental housing market has been characterized by rising vacancies for years. A targeted reduction in the number of new buildings in regions with high vacancies caused rental prices to rise. With a plus of one percent, asking rents in 2021 recorded moderate, but nonetheless the strongest growth since 2014. In the corona pandemic, the willingness to spend on housing also tended to increase somewhat.
The development varied from region to region. The trend in asking rents in French-speaking Switzerland was mostly down. Valais and Vaud recorded positive increases, while in the rest of western Switzerland mainly rent declines predominated, according to the announcement. In the canton of Zurich, rents rose by 1.1 percent and in Aargau by 2.1 percent. The increase was clearer in the mountain regions. In Graubünden, asking rents rose by 4.7 percent, in Uri and Nidwalden by 2.7 percent and 2.5 percent. The increase can be explained by the popularity of holiday properties in the mountains during the corona pandemic.
In larger cities, asking rents even fell in some cases, in Geneva by 1.9 percent and in Lausanne by 0.3 percent. Zurich shows only a small growth of 0.5 percent. The front runner is Bern with annual growth of 2.6 percent.
