Switzerland’s tenants’ associations have criticised landlords “taking advantage” of falling vacancies in the Swiss rental market.
New figures have revealed the extent of the growing rental crisis in Switzerland, with the number of vacant properties falling and house building projects increasingly inaccessible to low and medium-income renters.
According to the latest figures from the Federal Statistical Office (FSO), as of June 2026, there were 45,493 vacancies in Switzerland.
That represents 2,962 fewer properties than a year earlier, a fall of 6.1 percent. The number of properties offered for sale also fell, by 4.1 percent to 10,803 units.
In a press release, the Swiss tenants’ association Asloca condemned the lack of vacancies and unaffordable prices in Switzerland, both for rent and for sale.
It believes that many landlords are “taking advantage of this tight market to demand very high rents”, the group said.
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Asloca also highlighted the lack of housing for people on low or middle-incomes.
According to the organisation, construction is predominantly concentrated in the high-end market. For example, in Geneva, Carouge, and Écublens, the average monthly rent for new-build properties is 50 percent higher than that for existing buildings.
But this is a nation-wide trend. For the past six years, the number of vacancies has been falling steadily in Switzerland.
The overall vacancy rate for rental properties fell from 1.00 percent to 0.93 percent in the space of a year, FSO data shows.
The decline affects six of Switzerland’s major regions. Only the Zurich region recorded an increase, rising by 0.04 percentage points to 0.52 percent.
There were 7,624 homes available in the Lake Geneva region, representing a vacancy rate of just 0.77 percent.
There are significant differences between the cantons.
Zug has the lowest rate in the country, at 0.20 percent, ahead of Geneva (0.31 percent) and Obwalden (0.38 percent).
In total, 15 cantons have a rate of less than 1 percent.
At the other end of the scale, Jura has the highest rate, at 3.35 percent, ahead of Solothurn, at 1.91 percent.
Finally, all property sizes have seen a decline. This decline was proportionally greatest for two-room flats, with a fall of 8.5 percent.
Three-room flats remain the most numerous on the Swiss market, with 13,691 units, ahead of four-room flats, of which there were 11,929.
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