Switzerland Taming Property Price Growth

By Neil MacLucas 

ZURICH--Switzerland's government, central bank and mortgage lenders have successfully tamped down on growth of the Alpine country's surging property market, according to a quarterly real estate report released on Tuesday.

UBS AG said its index of housing prices edged 0.02 points higher in the three months ended June 30, though it remains above the 1.0 level that indicates an overheated market. Still the index's level, 1.24 is well below the 2.5 peak it reached during the last Swiss real estate bubble in the early 1990s.

Swiss property prices have surged over the past two years as record-low interest rates and an influx of wealthy migrants pushes up demand for condominiums and houses. The surging market has prompted warnings and action from the Swiss National Bank, which has twice imposed additional capital buffers on banks extending mortgages.

Last month, Finma, Switzerland's financial markets regulator, backed measures proposed by the Swiss Bankers Association, an industry organization, to reduce the time borrowers have to repay debt, as well as changing rules covering the eligibility of second incomes when assessing credit risk.

Banks have been tightening mortgage criteria over the past year.

The measures "are constricting prices for residential real estate and stifling the outlook" for price gains, UBS said in the report. It called the measures "successful."

Since the financial crisis, which triggered a downward spiral in borrowing costs, condominium values have risen by roughly 30% and detached home prices by more than a quarter, according to data compiled UBS and property consultants Wüst & Partner.

Switzerland's big cities--Zurich, Geneva, Lucerne and Lausanne--and low-tax locations such as Zug, have seen the sharpest rises in residential property prices, according to the report. They remain the areas most vulnerable to price declines, it said.

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