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Financing real estate has become significantly cheaper again.
Symbolic image: sda
Good news for property buyers: mortgage interest rates in Switzerland have fallen in recent weeks. Short terms in particular are benefiting.
Good news for property owners and prospective buyers: mortgage interest rates in Switzerland have fallen in the last two weeks. Surprisingly, shorter terms are now also benefiting from the easing, whereas they had risen slightly in January.
The small "interest rate shock" at the start of the year has therefore been overcome - the costs for real estate loans are back at the level they were at the end of 2023.
A recent analysis of 20 mortgage providers regularly monitored by "Finanz und Wirtschaft" confirms this decline. Seven new providers were included in the analysis in February, while two were excluded as they did not publish any current data. Nevertheless, the new market participants have not yet been included in the current calculation.
What is striking is that the majority of providers have lowered their benchmark rates across all maturities. Only two or three institutions have raised their interest rates slightly. The shorter terms in particular have seen a stronger downward trend:
2-year mortgage: -4 basis points to 1.29 percent
3-year mortgage: -5 basis points to 1.34 percent
5-year mortgage: -4 basis points to 1.43 percent
10-year mortgage: -3 basis points to 1.63 percent
There is a clear trend for ten-year mortgages in particular: in the second half of 2024, the share of this term rose from 38% to 51%, according to data from the broker MoneyPark, which is part of the Helvetia Group.
In the past two weeks, Mobiliar Insurance offered the cheapest mortgages, with interest rates ranging from 1.07% for two years to 1.4% for ten years.
At the other end of the scale is Generali, which was newly included in the analysis: Its interest rate is constant at 1.7 percent for all terms - almost consistently the highest figure. One exception is Raiffeisen, which charges an even higher 1.93% for ten-year mortgages.
Mortgage interest rates are heavily dependent on yields on government bonds and swap rates, which are crucial for bank refinancing. While ten-year market interest rates have not moved recently, two-year rates have fallen by 4 basis points.
Expectations for the Swiss National Bank's (SNB) key interest rate have shifted slightly upwards - from 0.09% to 0.14%. Inflation in Switzerland was 0.4 percent in January, as forecast.
