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Find an apartment in Switzerland — honestly prepared
Tell us where, how big and from when — you get the real market picture, a newcomer landlord dossier and pre-filtered portal links. No invented rent figures.
Vacancy rates, 1 June 2025
Verified cantonal figures
National 1.00% (48,455 empty apartments), 15 cantons below 1% — fifth consecutive annual decline, lowest in twelve years (BWO/BFS). Below, only cantonal figures verified to a primary source; where no figure is shown, it was not reliable across sources.
| Canton | Vacancy rate |
|---|---|
| Canton of Geneva | 0.34 % |
| Canton of Zug | 0.42 % |
| Canton of Zurich | 0.48 % |
| Canton of Lucerne | 0.78 % |
| Canton of Ticino | 1.92 % |
| Canton of Basel-Stadt | not primary-verified |
| Canton of Bern | not primary-verified |
| Canton of Vaud | not primary-verified |
What nobody else tells you
- A 1.00% national vacancy rate — and 0.34–0.48% in Geneva/Zug/Zurich — means almost no slack. You are one of 20+ applicants per listing, and good flats are gone within days. This figure is solid (BWO/BFS primary source).
- You cannot produce a Swiss Betreibungsauszug before you have lived in Switzerland — it does not exist for you yet. Explain the gap proactively and substitute other proof. Some landlords will reject you anyway — that is not a failing on your part.
- Viewing from abroad is genuinely hard: the desirable listings are shown only in person and are gone before a trip can line up with a slot. A structural mismatch, not a solvable inconvenience.
- We could not verify Homegate or ImmoScout24 (403). Any link to those is a best-effort browse, not a guaranteed pre-filtered search — reapply filters. Only Flatfox reads location/rooms/price from the link.
- Furnished short-term (UMS, Spacest) is a real bridge, but meaningfully pricier per month than an unfurnished lease — budget it as a temporary cost.
- We have NO verified rent figures for any city. The numbers circulating disagree by hundreds of francs and by metric. Treat any rent figure as a rough direction, never a precise median.
Sources
Checked directly against the primary sources for this research.
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