This was in Kanton Zurich but outside Zurich City, but such properties are everywhere (I’ve lived in 8 different places in Switzerland).
You have to keep your eyes open. I’ve been looking at real estate since around 2010 - I check every day and have alerts set-up.
In the 15 years I’ve been looking, I’ve analysed thousands of properties, identified maybe 15 that were investable. Of those, I physically visited 7 and made offers on 3 and bought 2. There were probably 2-3 that I should have invested in and am kicking myself for not doing so. However, capital is an issue and there’s a hassle factor too with owning property.
For higher yields, you might want to look at multi-family properties.
You have to decide if you want an investment or a home to live in. For a home to live in, it is very difficult to find one that makes sense financially now as these are bid up by people who want to live in them and don’t care about financial return and so the prices are too high to be financially viable.
There’s also the chance of altering property to extract hidden value, but this you need to have the eye and know-how for.
Also, everybody is looking at property on the big online sites. You want to look for properties not advertised on the internet to cut out a lot of competition.
Believe it or not, there are some who just stick a sign on their property (I guess hoping to sell locally), some you get via word of mouth and are never offered to the public, others you can get via your bank, make it known, get pre-approved, banks get a lot of inventory and again many don’t make it onto the public market, newspapers are another good source.
I’m not in the market for new property but still have alerts every day for a few cantons I might retire in. You also need to get a feel for the market and what is out there so alerts are the minimum work you need to do.