How High Are Rents in Switzerland?

The average monthly rent for a home in Switzerland is 1412 Swiss francs. According to the Swiss Federal Statistical Office (FSO), that is the weighted average rent across all rental homes including housing cooperatives, without accounting for size. The table below shows average rents for homes of different sizes.

Table: Average rents for housing in Switzerland

Statistics based on data from 2022. Source: FSO

How rents compare to income

But how big a toll does the cost of housing take? Can high salaries compensate for the high housing costs? In order to answer that question, real estate service provider Wüest Partner conducted a study in which it calculated the burden of housing costs for Swiss households.

According to the 2023 study, Swiss households which rent their homes spend an average of between one-fourth and one-third of their gross incomes (after mandatory social security contributions, health insurance premiums, and taxes) on housing. The study is based on gross rent, meaning net rent plus supplemental charges (including energy and heating costs).

As a general rule, housing is a bigger expense for people who live alone and for single-parent households. And logically, the lower a household’s income is, the bigger the relative burden of housing costs is. For these reasons, the cost of housing is exceptionally high for pensioners who live alone.

High relative housing costs in Ticino

Housing is a particularly large expense in the regions of Northern and Western Switzerland, and in the suburbs of large Swiss cities. The financial burden is lower in cities themselves.

That does not mean that rents in cities like Zurich and Geneva are exceptionally affordable. On the contrary, rents in these cities are outstandingly high. The fact that housing is a smaller expense for urban dwellers is directly related to fact that the incomes of urban households are higher than the national average. The constantly rising rents in cities can also result in housing becoming a lower expense for those with longstanding rental agreements, even though very little affordable housing is available to new renters.

Renters in the cantons of Ticino, Basel-Landschaft, and Solothurn carry the biggest housing burdens. One reason why housing makes up a significant expense in Ticino is that a disproportionate number of pensioners reside in that canton. Because pensioners have relatively low incomes, on average, paying rent consumes a larger portion of their income. The financial burden of housing is somewhat lower in the cantons of Jura, Glarus, and Appenzell Innerrhoden.

The cost of housing compared to other European countries

Compared to other European countries, the cost of housing in Switzerland is high. The average financial burden of housing for renters in Switzerland is among the highest among all OECD countries. So, Swiss households spend a larger portion of their available income on rent than households in other countries. That does not mean that housing in Switzerland is more expensive than in all other countries. In Nordic countries like Finland, Sweden, and Norway, housing is a notably larger expense than it is in Switzerland. But compared to neighboring countries, and particularly Germany and Austria, Swiss households have to spend much more of their income on housing.

Reasons for climbing rents

These factors drive up the cost of housing for Swiss renters:

• Higher construction costs: When home owners have to pay more to build or renovate a property, they pass on these costs by charging higher rents. Higher building costs also result in fewer new homes being built, resulting in fewer properties being available on the market. If demand for housing remains unchanged, the costs of housing go up.
• New regulations: When regulations become stricter, then creating homes which comply with regulations becomes more costly. More money has to be invested in each home, and the higher costs result in higher rents.
• Sustainable housing: Compared to standard housing, energy-efficient and climate-neutral housing is often more expensive to build and maintain. If the bulk of available housing in an area is ecological, then renters may have no other choice but to pay higher rents.
• Smaller households: The aging population and the trend towards individualism has resulted in an ongoing decline in the average number of people per household. This results in a demand for larger amounts of living space per person, and subsequently a higher average housing-cost burden per household.
• Population growth: The more people want to live in Switzerland, the bigger the demand for housing becomes. When population growth outpaces the creation of new housing, then the cost of housing goes up. The higher property costs are passed on to renters by way of higher rents.
• Spatial planning: Spatial planning ensures that the amount of land which can be built on is limited. That limits the amount of residential property available. If demand for housing remains unchanged, then property prices go up, and rents go up along with them.

More on this topic:
Can my landlord raise my rent?
Simple ways to improve your chances of finding a rental home
Rent or buy? Which makes more financial sense?
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