ZURICH (Mar 1): Mom-and-pop investors are rushing into Swiss properties just as the market faces its greatest threat of a bubble in a quarter century.
“I see two protracting trends,” Patrik Gisel, chief executive officer of Swiss Raffeisen, the country’s third-largest bank, said in an interview in Zurich. One involves big money — institutional investors such as pension funds and insurance companies who have invaded the market, driven by negative yields on Swiss government bonds. More recently, a new group of investors has entered the fray, buying properties to rent or develop rather than for a primary residence.
“What’s really new is that private investors are piling in to buy real-estate assets for yield due to limited options,” he said. These aren’t ultra-rich speculators, rather well-to-do people looking to build nest eggs at a time of record-low interest rates and market turmoil. Although they are still just a small part of the market, “this is reducing the professionalism,” he said.
Soft landing
Raiffeisen, a cooperative encompassing about 300 regional banks, is one of Switzerland’s five systemically relevant banks, along with UBS Group AG and Credit Suisse Group AG. It holds about 17% of the Swiss mortgage market, with home loans representing about 95% of the total volume of 166 billion francs (US$166 billion) (RM696 billion) at the end of 2015.
The Swiss property market is facing the greatest threat of a real estate bubble since 1991, UBS said in a report this month on the subject. Loan applications for properties not occupied by owners dipped in the fourth quarter, yet remain historically elevated at about 18% of the overall demand. House prices rose 0.5% from the third quarter and around 2% yearly.
While the risk of default on mortgages remains low in Switzerland, vacancy rates are rising, with prices “driven by investments, not by the need for living space,” Gisel said. Unlike in countries including the UK and US, Swiss buyers traditionally are looking to make a lifetime investment as capital gains taxes make it costly to speculate.
Gisel, formerly the deputy CEO who succeeded Pierin Vincenz at the head of Raiffeisen last year, said he sees a “soft landing” in the property market. The bank said during its earnings report Friday that prices are stabilising at a high level or declining slightly.
Swiss apartment prices and mortgage lending climbed by about a third between 2007 and 2014. A price increase of 2% would have been unappealing just four years ago, Gisel said.
The Swiss National Bank introduced charges on bank deposits in an effort to weaken the franc, which soared after it lifted its three-year-old cap on the currency in January 2015. Some big banks such as UBS and Credit Suisse have passed on the pain of negative interest rates to their larger institutional clients. Retail clients have been spared, for now.
“Equities are too risky for many private investors, bonds don’t yield anything, so people go for real estate but often have a poor understanding of this market,” says Fredy Hasenmaile, head of real estate research at Credit Suisse. Inexperienced investors tend to underestimate the costs associated to maintain a property.
Raiffeisen said Friday that net income rose 6.4% to 808 million francs in 2015 after it sold part of its stake in Swiss financial technology company Leonteq AG and bought Swiss private bank La Roche. Raiffeisen also has a partnership with Vontobel Holding AG in asset management and security settlement.
