Nyon Real Estate: Why is everything so expensive?
- Mandy
- Mar 29, 2021
- 2 min read
Updated: Feb 4
Do you own property or are you considering buying something in the area? This series of articles is for you! The Nyon property digest is published once a month.Thank you to Harriet Kibbe for sharing her knowledge of the local real estate market with us and breaking down the information. In this monthly series, she highlights different topics giving some local property-related insights and tips. To start off, she dives into one of the most common reactions when people move or look to buy in our area:"Why is everything so expensive?" What I hear most from recently arrived expats is usually ‘I didn’t realise how expensive it was to live here!’ shortly followed by ‘but it is really beautiful’. Even after living here 15 years, and having partly grown up here, I catch myself muttering under my breath ‘so bloody expensive’ several times a day! Property in this part of Switzerland is no exception to this ‘it’s so expensive’ knee-jerk comment and the reason for that is very basic economics: the demand for property, and in particular single family units, far outweighs the supply thereof.
There are, of course, several factors that combine to ensure that prices in the Geneva - Morges area remain high, higher than the rest of Switzerland, which I will attempt to sum up:
Cap on new-builds through communal, cantonal and federal regulations (for many reasons: green space, landscape, demographics, favouring agriculture, local plans to maintain low levels of noise and other pollution, etc);
Record low mortgage rates, incentivising medium to long term residents to buy;
High rentals due to demand from short term residents, pushing people aiming to stay longer to save money by buying;
The famous lump-sum taxation (particularly in Vaud) does attract wealthy homeowners, who also drive prices up on the higher end of the property market.
There is so much to say but the reality is that we all enjoy the Swiss landscape, greenery and quality of life and construction... and so do the Swiss authorities who intend to maintain them.