Housing costs exceed a third of the budget

Individual households suffer particularly

Housing costs exceed a third of the budget

The supply of apartments continues to decrease and rents are rising. This is putting an increasing strain on the budget – even outside the city limits.

There is a housing shortage in Switzerland. The situation is likely to worsen further in 2023, according to the consulting firm Wüest Partner. The result: the declining supply of apartments is causing prices to rise on the rental housing market. And leads to an increasing burden on the housing budget.

According to a study by Wüest Partner published on Tuesday, the supply of apartments continued to decrease in the past year. The supply rate – i.e. the properties on offer as a percentage of the stock – is 4.7 percent. In the previous year it was still 5.8 percent. Such illiquidity has not been observed since 2013, the real estate experts sound the alarm.

Population is growing – construction activity is not

One reason for this is the decline in construction activity. The tourism communities in particular are feeling the long-term effects of the second home initiative. But even in big cities like Zurich or Geneva, the supply of rental apartments is very limited. There is also strong population growth. In addition, construction activity is unlikely to pick up again before 2024.

This lack of rental apartments and inflation caused rents to rise as early as 2022. The trend is likely to continue in 2023 – Wüest Partner expects asking rents to increase by 2 percent in 2023. Since the mortgage reference interest rate is also likely to be raised, rents in existing contracts will also increase.

A third goes to housing

In the study, Wüest Partner also examined the development of the housing cost burden. After a few stable years, this has recently risen again. The number of municipalities in which the housing cost burden of tenant households is on average more than 30 percent increased between 2020 and 2023 – among the 168 municipalities with more than 10,000 inhabitants from 20 to 90 municipalities.

A higher housing cost burden can be observed in northern and western Switzerland as well as in the urban agglomerations. The highest loads are recorded in the cantons of Ticino and Solothurn. But also in and around Basel, Zurich and Lucerne. The relative housing cost burden is lowest in the cantons of Appenzell-Innerrhoden, Glarus and Jura.