Renters who land a publicly owned flat in Zurich hit the jackpot

Thousands of residents benefit from Zurich’s low-cost municipal housing. But not all tenants actually meet the city’s eligibility criteria. Zurich now wants to crack down on this while sparing large sections of the population. A newly built four-and-a-half room flat in a central location for a bargain CHF1,860 ($2,332): in the overheated Zurich rental market, it sounds like a fake advertisement. Yet this offer was placed not by a fraudster, but the city of Zurich itself. The apartment in question is located in the new Hardau 1 housing estate, which the city is offering at cost – what’s known as “cost-based rent” or rent to cover costs. These low rents are possible because the city bought up the land in the 1960s and can price the units based on the purchase price at the time. Land is the great inflator of prices in Zurich. Since the mid-1970s, the price of a square metre of land has increased twelvefold. On the open market, such an apartment would cost three times the rent being ...