Swiss property market saw strong growth in 2025

Swiss property market saw strong growth in 2025. Keystone-SDA

The Swiss property investment market has seen positive growth in 2025. Strong demand for secure investments and returns should continue to support the market, according to real estate consultancy IAZI.

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“2025 was not a bad year for Swiss property investments,” Donato Scognamiglio, chairman of the board of directors of IAZI, told the media in Zurich on Monday. It is the combination of rising rents and appreciating property values that is keeping returns high.

In concrete terms, direct property investments generated an average return of 6.1% last year. This was another substantial increase on the previous year, which had already posted a 4.4% rise.

Those who invested in flats recorded an even higher average return of 6.8%. The average return on office and commercial property was 4.8%.

The increase in benchmark rents, which has been observed for years, rose by a further 3.7% in 2025 alone, according to IAZI data. By 2024, rents had already risen by 4.5%. What’s more, housing supply is becoming scarce, as shown by the downward trend in vacancy rates.

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Looking back over the past 20 years, the trend is clearly upwards. Since 2005, asking rents have risen by an average of 31%. According to Scognamiglio, real wages have risen by only 9% over the same period.

Fall in existing rents

Those who have been living in the same home for ten years or more can count themselves lucky. Existing rents for these “old tenants” have so far remained stable over the same period.

The reason: the benchmark interest rate that determines rents fell steadily from 2008 to 2020, and has remained at a low level ever since. The only exceptions were in June and December 2023, when the benchmark interest rate was raised. Since September 2025, it has been back at 1.25%.

In its “Swiss Property Benchmark”, the property consultancy IAZI analyses around 16,000 investment properties with a market value of around CHF326 billion ($414 billion). This portfolio includes some 218,000 rental properties.

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Adapted from French by AI/ts

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