I would love to delete my Facebook account and then I remember why I can’t. Marketplace. Handy for buying and selling second hand. Essential if you’re looking for an apartment in Lausanne.
“Are you in the groups?” You’ll get asked, as you tell everyone and their cat of your desperate search.
Yes, I am in the groups. Along with 120’000 others looking for a 2-3 room apartment in Sous Gare with a lake view and a kitchen built after the 1950s for under 2’000 CHF. Even a lake glimpse is fine. Even a view of a brick wall that can be covered with a poster of the lake is desirable. After months of looking, you might even consider building four brick walls yourself; it should not be this difficult to find somewhere to live.
Yet it is, across Switzerland, with an estimated shortage of 35’000 homes. Construction rates in the country are the lowest they’ve been in twenty years. Building rules are stricter and there’s an absence of land to meet the demands of a growing population. The French speaking part of the country is the worst affected.
Nobody who’s been through a move in Lausanne, or who is preparing for one, will be surprised to read this. What is surprising is that although the housing crisis in Switzerland is increasingly acute, there doesn’t seem to be any short-term fixes to make the search less painful. Lausanne’s borders are filling out. Neighbouring communes are being given new leases of life (literally). But for those on the flat hunt today, it’s still astonishingly hard to find something that ticks all your boxes. There’s no choice but to grit your teeth and accept that in Vaud, moving is a debacle.
Online, that involves keyboard warfare. You best be one of the first to respond to an announcement that piques your interest before visiting slots are overbooked, or it disappears entirely. You must dodge fraud, advertisements for sketchy beauty treatments and take a leap of faith on two blurred photos only to write to the tenant and get ghosted anyway. Your hopes and your heart would have a gentler time on Tinder.
In person, it’s even more savage. Expect to be trudging around a smaller-than-listed flat with about 15 others giving side eye and trying to elbow you out the way for a chance to suck up to the host. Tape measures are whipped out as if it were a duel. Régie contacts are namedropped to make you even more despondent. You didn’t even like the place, but you apply regardless because this is a game, and you must play it. You question whether, in your ripening age, you really are too old for a flat share.
I could offer you tips, but there are plenty of those already (on The Lausanne Guide !). To be blunt, it will all come down to luck. You have to be in the right place, at the right time, with the wind behind you. And if you’re on a deadline, consider widening your criteria.
If neither the city, nor the canton can offer any short-term relief for prospective tenants, the only thing we can do is make it lighter for each other. Reply to those who express an interest in a listing. Consider offering a handful of individual visits instead of having a group round. Exercise kindness, even when your frustration with the system is at breaking point.
I cross my fingers that there’s a home waiting for you in Lausanne, and that it’s the right one for you.
The Lausanne Guide contacted several régies for their view on the current housing crisis, but we suspect they were too swamped to respond.
Vanessa Tracey is a contributing writer for The Lausanne Guide, you can also find her on Substack.
Source: RTS Info
Photo by Patrick William on Unsplash
