What I understand by “you feel like in Canada” is that there are lots of forests and not many people. You feel the wilderness of the nature and you’re away from it all. This is indeed hard to experience in Switzerland, as it is dense with people.
Yes, I guess you should :). Never been there, but some time ago I was talking with a person who used to travel a lot. I asked him about Norway (considered by me as the most beautiful, never been there neither) and he replied: Norway is beautiful, but nothing can beat Canada :).
You can get lost in nature with no civilization in sight in the Graubunden, they’re the most remote part of the country I know for long hiking trips. It’s still no Canada, but it’s reachable by car/train/bus.
I thought about it, but still, there are valleys that you have to follow, and high mountains that are hard to reach. I guess maybe in Sweden you can get a feeling of this kind of isolation. I remember watching a Netflix horror The Ritual, nice forests in there!
To be honest, everyone should be proud of their own country. Maybe not of their politicians/people/whatever… but I still have to see a place that wasn’t beautiful on it’s own way.
Of course you can’t compare the deserts of Egypt with the forest of Germany…
(to the polish people: One of my next goals was to visit Poland. I saw so man beautiful photos of it)
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I agree that there is a lot to explore in Zurich. But I have been here since 2014 and and at this point I feel that I have seen it all. Especially around HB. But for sure in Switzerland this is the city with the most to see and do. New restaurants keep popping up so there is a renewal.
If you are willing to spend money in theatre, restaurants, I think you might be never bored. There is so many different places… But just for walking around… I think I have seen my share.
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Am I the only one who has the feeling that during last month we can observe acceleration on the market in terms of how quickly everything is being sold? Even new investments which were available since months, seem to be gone now… At least in French-speaking part of Switzerland - do you observe it also in the other part?
I don’t see that in Vaud.
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I perceive a substancial increase of prices per m2 since October in Zurich.
Cannot say the %, but I have never seen prices going that crazy. Prices well above 10k/m2 in the suburds of Zurich-city, above 20k when getting closer to the center
EDIT: let’s not forget that I did not see much opportunities during the 1st lockdown and during summer holidays, I started to see much more offers as of September
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Trying to move to Zurich from Basel (to rent), I have been looking for the past 2-3 months and I have to say it’s been a nightmare. For many flats you have to send a message within 12 hours of the publication of the ad, to be added to A LOTTERY FOR VIEWING the property. This on top of the absolutely outrageous prices. This is London housing level of bad, which I thought I would have never see again in my life.
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Yeah. On one hand it seems like Zurich prices are already high. On the other hand every posting is in high demand, which suggests that no, the prices are not really at equilibrium. I would like for someone who is more into this subject to explain it better. If it’s so hard to find a flat in Zurich, why are prices not even higher? Is there some limit set in law?
Believe me, I would not like to pay more for rent, but at a certain point you have to ask yourself what is better: protecting the rent level of current renters, or providing liquidity to the market.
By the way, I have another question, should an expert emerge. How does the concept of Genossenschafts-Wohnungen work? For example, instead of paying 2400 rent you pay only 1800. How is that possible? Someone loses on this 600 income. Getting a Genossenschaft-Wohnung seems like another kind of lottery.
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Landlords are quite limited in when they are allowed to raise rental raise and by how much.
In general it goes like this:
“The landlord may increase the rent if inflation rises, the reference rate has been raised, maintenance and operating costs have actually risen (general cost increase) or major alterations or renovations have been made. Sometimes landlords also try to justify an increase with local and neighbourhood pricing.”
Here you can find some more details:
Mietzinsanpassungsgründe › Mietzinserhöhung (mietzinserhoehung.ch)
Basically, landlords have very little leeway in changing rental rates without external factors having changed (except through renovating the place).
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I don’t think it’s very hard to find expensive apartments in Zurich, the 4k+ CHF apartments tend to stay around for a while. (And that’s a good chunk of the new built)
Adding new apartments that people can’t afford doesn’t really add liquidity.
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Because most Genossenschaften do not work for profit. They are just looking to cover their expenses and being able to slowly grow.
Furthermore some Genossenschaften will get private capital at a lower rate than from the banks, but the private person gets more than from a savings account.
But yeah, mostly it is because some people regard a living place for all as a human right, and do not build new luxury appartments which noone needs but actually affordable ones (you see a lot of high value rents sitting for a long time for instance in cities like Winterthur, even some stupid offers like 3 first months offered like for internet subscriptions. However affordable ones are gone infew minutes).
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Also bringing diversity into neighborhoods is good for having a better integrated society, which usually benefits everyone (instead of ghettos).
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However, I tend to belief that lifting restricted pricing doesn’t matter a lot, if building housing isn’t liberalised.
As long as housing is undersupplied, you will run into pricing problems (either high prices or misallocation of housing).
Genossenschaften seem like a reasonable way of dealing with problems of the policy of restricted pricing and building but you are not fixing the root problem of the policies.
At the same time, the idea that Zürich would be full of luxury appartments if the housing market was liberalised is ridiculous. Landlords want to rent out their appartments and there are not that many individuals who can afford luxury appartments.
Yes, poor households would probably be driven out of the city centre… but there are much better ways in preventing “ghettos” than restrictive urban planning.
As a basic pricinciple, you should let markets work and THEN let the government step in and fix inefficiencies or negative externalities (such as ghettos, lack of diversity, enviromental concerns etc.).
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The problem is not really that housing in general is undersupplied, but more that housing for lower income is undersupplied.
For instance, a lot of housing issues in Germany occured when social housing was sold by the city for a symbolic euro (to get away debt issued for high political value projects), investors took this flats and turned them into high rent appartments the people could not afford anymore (-> gentrification)
At the same time, the idea that Zürich would be full of luxury appartments if the housing market was liberalised is ridiculous. Landlords want to rent out their appartments and there are not that many individuals who can afford luxury appartments.
Problem is that a control loop with high inertia is not perfect : the time the market sees “fuck we got too many luxury appartments and no one wants them” there are already too much of them…
Ya problem is that something an overshoot can start to become a runoff with a tipping point of no return, see climate change where the effects are self-accelerating the phenomenon, or where poverty leads to more poverty
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Fair point about the “control loop”.
But seems like a problem that would fix itself in the long-run if the liberal policies were consistent, right? It’s not like after liberalisation organic demand for luxury appartments would jump around a lot.
poverty leads to more poverty
This is exactly something that can be adressed while letting the markets work. For example by ensuring that education and returns to education don’t depend on parental income or through transfers.
Ya but how much it gonna take ?
Look housing market has been largely liberalized in the 80s/90s when cities sold their own housing units. and now 30-40 laters we run into that issue.
Anyway, in my humble opinion, a liberal market is just allocating money where the highest profit for the individual is seen, the collateral damage/externalities which society has to cope with is disregarded.
For instance, for doing that transfer for education, you will need to levy taxes to counteract. What will happen is that the money is just going somewhere else where the taxes will be lower since the externalities are not dealt with. Just look how big companies are hiding their profits in tax havens. They are perfectly happy with safe countries like Europe, well educated people for free, corona helps, nice roads and infrastructure (when was the last city wide black out in EU ?), none corrupt police. But when it is about to pay up for it, noone is ther anymore.
Anyway, we are getting away from the subject.
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Except for the big pension funds, I’m not sure how rational the individual landlords are 
So pricing make take a ton of time to adjust (esp. since individuals are super loss averse, so if they planned on renting out a high value apartment, what are they going to do, they’re not going to want to price it for cheaper but just let it sit very long in the hope that someone will take it).
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