No easing on the housing market Rents on offer rise by 2.6 percent in the first half of the year

Rents will continue to rise steadily in 2024. According to the Homegate rental index, asking rents rose by an average of 2.6% across Switzerland in the first half of the year. There is no easing in sight.

The renewed increase is still primarily due to a clear excess demand, as the real estate portal reported on Monday. This is because the housing shortage has been further exacerbated by the low level of construction activity in combination with population growth. "The excess demand for housing allowed landlords in many places to adjust the asking rents upwards," it said.

Increase across the board

What is new is that the higher rents no longer only affect large cities such as Zurich and Geneva. Without exception, asking rents have risen in all cantons in the last six months. The cantons of Zug and Schaffhausen led the way with increases of 5.6 percent each. However, there were also significant increases in the cantons of Lucerne (+5.1%) and Valais (+4.6%). The housing shortage is thus "slowly but steadily developing from a primarily urban to a widespread phenomenon".

The largest increases are therefore increasingly being seen in the somewhat smaller cities. The frontrunner among the eight cities surveyed in the first half of the year was Lucerne, with a 6.3% increase in asking rents. It was followed by Lugano (+5.1%) and St. Gallen (+3.8%).

And there is no easing of the situation in sight for the time being. Although net immigration is decreasing somewhat, new construction activity remains manageable and the number of building applications submitted indicates "stagnating residential construction at best" in the coming months.

SDA