Real estate market

Real estate is both living and working space and, for many households, simultaneously their largest asset and one of their biggest expenditure. The real estate market, however, extends far beyond housing alone: in addition to the residential market, it encompasses the markets for office, retail and commercial space as well as the land market.

On the demand side, rising incomes, growing expectations regarding comfort, location and space, and demographic change all play a role. They are met by a supply for which the availability of building land is decisive and whose framework is set by tenancy law and spatial planning with their densification objectives.

How this interplay plays out varies greatly from region to region. While in metropolitan areas a shortage of space and rising rents dominate the public and political debate, shrinking regions grapple with vacancies and the question of how to preserve infrastructure and vibrant town centres. Using scarce space efficiently and distributing it in a socially sustainable way remains a challenge with far-reaching social, environmental and economic dimensions. This is where we come in: we make the economic interrelationships visible and support you in particular in the following areas:

  • Regulation. We support authorities, associations and companies in analysing and developing the regulation of real estate markets. Using sound economic concepts and quantitative methods, we examine existing rules — for instance in tenancy law or the Spatial Planning Act — and estimate the impact of new regulatory initiatives.
  • Spatial statistics and data analysis. In real estate markets, location is decisive. We use econometric methods to extract price, rent and location effects from market, rental and administrative data, thereby identifying correlations and causal relationships. Learn more.
  • Rent and yield analyses. Drawing on concepts from real estate finance, we assess permissible yields based on a WACC approach, taking into account regional differences as well as regulatory factors such as the reference interest rate.

Contact

Marco Salvi ist Managing Economist bei Swiss Economics.

Maida Sabotic ist Economist bei Swiss Economics.

Lernen Sie unser komplettes Team kennen.

Selected projects

What implications arise for the Canton of Zurich based on the evidence from other cantons?

How could housing allowances be organised throughout Switzerland?