Over the last few years mortgage interest rates have been exceptionally low in Switzerland. However, since mid-December 2021 they have risen and are at levels last seen in 2018. © Clement Mantion Pierre Olivier | Dreamstime.comAccording to recent data collected the newspaper Finanz und Wirtschaft, Swiss mortgage interest rates are 0.25 percentage points higher than a month earlier. 10-year guide rates at large banks such as Credit Suisse and Raiffeisen are now over 1.6%, according to the...
Read More »No weakening expected in Swiss house prices
© Alyssand | Dreamstime.com The Swiss housing market continues to rise with no signs of weakening, reported RTS this week. According to the real estate platform immoscout24, the average price per m2 for a family home in Switzerland has risen from CHF 6,700 to CHF 7,200 over the last 12 months, a rise of 7%. Apartment prices have risen even further in some places. According to Roxane Montagner, who works for CiFi, a company that advises real estate professionals, the...
Read More »No weakening expected in Swiss house prices
The Swiss housing market continues to rise with no signs of weakening, reported RTS this week. © Alyssand | Dreamstime.comAccording to the real estate platform immoscout24, the average price per m2 for a family home in Switzerland has risen from CHF 6,700 to CHF 7,200 over the last 12 months, a rise of 7%. Apartment prices have risen even further in some places. According to Roxane Montagner, who works for CiFi, a company that advises real estate professionals, the trend is not about...
Read More »Building construction costs rise sharply in Switzerland
As inflation rises around the world, Switzerland feels the heat too. This week the Federal Statistical Office (FSO) published data on construction, which show an unusually large jump in costs. © Spunky1234 | Dreamstime.comThe costs of construction leapt 2.7% between April and October 2021, according to the data, leaving prices 4.1% higher than a year earlier. The construction index contains both civil engineering works and building construction. Between April and October 2021, the...
Read More »Number of vacant homes in Switzerland drops for first time in 12 years
© Cristianzamfir | Dreamstime.com Finding a place to live in Switzerland is difficult. Home availability is low and prices are high. On 13 September 2021, the Federal Statistical Office published data showing a sharp drop in the number of vacant homes since 2020, a development that will make home hunting harder. On 1 June 2021, there were 71,365 vacant homes in Switzerland, representing 1.54% of the total stock of housing. Since 1 June 2020, the number of vacant...
Read More »Number of vacant homes in Switzerland drops for first time in 12 years
© Cristianzamfir | Dreamstime.com Finding a place to live in Switzerland is difficult. Home availability is low and prices are high. On 13 September 2021, the Federal Statistical Office published data showing a sharp drop in the number of vacant homes since 2020, a development that will make home hunting harder. On 1 June 2021, there were 71,365 vacant homes in Switzerland, representing 1.54% of the total stock of housing. Since 1 June 2020, the number of vacant...
Read More »Number of vacant homes in Switzerland drops for first time in 12 years
Finding a place to live in Switzerland is difficult. Home availability is low and prices are high. On 13 September 2021, the Federal Statistical Office published data showing a sharp drop in the number of vacant homes since 2020, a development that will make home hunting harder. © Cristianzamfir | Dreamstime.comOn 1 June 2021, there were 71,365 vacant homes in Switzerland, representing 1.54% of the total stock of housing. Since 1 June 2020, the number of vacant homes has dropped by 7,467,...
Read More »Federal Council supports elimination of imputed rents for Swiss home owners
In Switzerland, home owners must add a fictional or imputed rent to their taxable income, which is calculated based on the home’s floor area. Proposals to eliminate imputed rent have been around for sometime. This week, the Federal Council came out in support of a plan to eliminate it put forward earlier by a commission of the Council of States, Switzerland’s upper house. © Pavalache Stelian | Dreamstime.comThe Federal Council’s main motivation for changing the current system, which also...
Read More »Risk of parts of Swiss real estate market overheating, says UBS
The latest UBS Swiss Real Estate Bubble Index published this week shows several regions at risk of overheating property prices. © Annanahabed | Dreamstime.comThe regions highlighted as exposed include Basel, Lausanne, Vevey, parts of the Vaud Alps, Lugano, Nidwalden, Luzern, Zug and the Zurich region, all parts of Switzerland where there is plenty of high paid work. Lausanne, Basel, Zug, Luzern and parts of the Zurich region are described as having fundamental risk, while Vevey and...
Read More »Gold, Stocks & Commodities- A Complicated Correlation
In our July 29 post titled How Gold Stacks Up Against Stocks, Property, Commodities and Big Macs! we showed readers charts of gold as a ratio to other assets and products. We discussed that gold competes with crypto and stocks for the investment dollars. It was clear that gold as a ratio of the S&P 500 Index and of the broader MCSI World Equity Index show that gold is ‘relatively cheap’ compared to these measures. But then we showed that this wasn’t the...
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