I have been browsing apartments around Zurich on [https://www.homegate.ch/](https://www.homegate.ch/). There are a few interesting offers but I’m unfamiliar with the market and wonder how I should interpret the listing prices.
Is the seller providing a realistic, slightly high asking price? In other words, can I offer the listing price or maybe even 5% less and realistically expect to close?
Or are listing prices set low to create some kind of auction and I should better budget 20% over the listing price?
Note: I’m familiar with (the German form of) Baurecht and have been avoiding such offers.
4 comments
Do you mean rental prices (your screenshot shows rental properties)? They’re rarely negotiable due to extreme scarcity. The only rents that can be negotiated are those for luxury housing (7-9k/month and such). If you mean prices to buy then there is room for biding. I’d say never bid above the asking price to start with.
I recently bought a property and made an offer a bit lower than asking price, about 5%. If they say no you can always make a higher offer.
Depends a lot on where you look. Say, something in Zurich in a decent neighborhood and size? That’s gonna be tough. Unless the price is way above comparable rates you can expect a large number of interested parties. I came to a viewing once with roughly 50-60 people already waiting. If you want to buy it’s even harder. Most reasonable deals don’t make it to homegate. Anything on there is either overpriced or otherwise problematic. Also, expect a bidding war. I live a bit outside Zurich and I recently saw a fairly small plot of land get bid up to 2m. It’s pretty crazy.
Generally, it is a sellers market which means that the listing prices are (usually) lower then the prices that are actually paid.