Will home ownership disappear in the near future?

A large kitchen, your own office and a gorgeous garden: For many, the dream of owning their own home is a major goal in life. But for more and more people, it mostly remains a dream.

As current figures from Zürcher Kantonalbank show, the number of single-family homeowners has decreased slightly in recent years. In 2014, 35 percent of Swiss families were still living in a single-family home. Seven years later it was only 32 percent.

“But this is not due to a lack of interest in single-family homes,” says Orsina Copley, head of real estate research at Zürcher Kantonalbank. Rather, it is about the sharp rise in real estate prices. Particularly since the financial crisis in 2008, prices have skyrocketed.

Stefan Pestler also notes a decline in single-family homes, but also in condominiums. “But demand is still at a very high level,” emphasizes the mortgage specialist at VZ VermögensZentrum.

In addition to rising real estate prices, he also attributes the decline in demand to mortgage interest rates, which have been rising for years. For more than a decade it ranged from about one percent, and now it is twice that high or more.

However, Bestler doubts that single-family homes will disappear in the near future. “Only in the long term is it conceivable that single-family homes will not be manageable for many people.”

The first such trends can be seen, for example, in alternative buildings. “Because of the high land prices, more and more single-family homes are being demolished and making way for a new apartment building,” Copley says.

This will make it increasingly difficult in the future to see your family grow up in a single family home.