OWI: Demand for rental housing declines
The rental housing market in Switzerland and the largest Swiss cities continues to ease. The reason for this is a decline in demand for rental apartments, according to a recent study.
As shown by the Online Housing Index (OWI) of SVIT Switzerland and the Swiss Real Estate Institute of the HWZ Hochschule für Wirtschaft Zürich for the winter half-year 2016/17, the insertion times of rental apartments on internet platforms have increased significantly from 32 to 37 days compared to the last semester. The supply of advertised apartments, on the other hand, has grown slightly in the same period: it was 196,187 compared to 193,434 advertisements. In the previous year, the insertion period was still 28 days.
In the cities, the demand overhang is apparently continuing to diminish. The number of advertisements has increased year-on-year in almost all cities, according to the OWI. At the same time, the time taken to place an ad increased in all cities except Lugano. This proves that even in the urban rental housing environment, the market mechanisms play perfectly, the authors of the study say. In the cities studied, it is no longer possible to speak of a housing shortage. Even in the "hot spots" of Zurich, Bern and Geneva, apartments had to be advertised for significantly longer over the course of the year, according to the online housing index.
