Zurich sees rise in new flats despite more demolitions
More flats were completed in the city of Zurich in 2025 than the year before, even though more buildings were torn down. The city itself delivered more new housing than the building cooperatives.
Select your language
Generated with artificial intelligence.
Listening:
Zurich sees rise in new flats despite more demolitions
+ Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox
Statistik Stadt Zürich reported on Wednesday that 2,977 flats were completed last year – 347 more than in the previous 12 months. Taking new builds, conversions, demolitions and changes to the register into account, the city’s housing stock stood at 238,472 homes at the end of 2025, it said.
+ Zurich: Welcome to the world capital of housing shortages!
The 1,379 flats that were demolished mark the second‑highest ever recorded after 2021 and represent an increase of 539 on the previous year. Meanwhile, the number of homes created through conversions reached a peak of 547.
According to the city, it built more flats in 2025 than the building cooperatives for the first time since the housing register was introduced in 2009: 768 compared with 618. The sharp rise in municipal homes is largely due to the completion of the Tramdepot Hard, Letzi and Leutschenbach housing developments.
Construction activity set to remain strong in Zurich
Because of the high number of demolitions, Statistik Stadt Zürich expects construction activity to remain strong. Demolished flats are usually replaced by new buildings. In 2025, a further 79 construction projects, covering roughly 3,000 flats, were approved.
+ No house generation: the impossibility of buying property in Switzerland
The number of flats built on sites that were previously uninhabited was higher than usual. Around two‑thirds of the number of homes created through conversions were built on such sites.
Translated from German by AI/sp
We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.
Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.
If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at english@swissinfo.ch.
In compliance with the JTI standards
More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.