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The housing situation is precarious in the gateway to the Bernese Oberland. There is no quick solution to the problem.
The town at the entrance to the Bernese Oberland is pretty, has a historic old town, many shops, restaurants, family quarters, a motorway connection, the Aare and Lake Thun and the mountains are close enough to touch. That’s why many want to live there – which has consequences for the housing market.
The vacancy rate in Thun is significantly lower than in most Swiss cities, apart from Zurich.
A low vacancy rate is not a problem per se, says real estate expert Donato Scognamiglio: “Actually, the low rate is primarily a sign that the city is in great demand and that people like to live there.” Nevertheless, the theoretical number becomes a problem in practice if tenants cannot find a suitable home.
The endless search for an apartment gets on your nerves
Nadja (name changed) knows very well how difficult it is to look for an apartment. For the past nine months, she and her partner have been combing the internet regularly in search of a new apartment.
In terms of standard of construction, we are generally not demanding.
She clicks through the few advertisements that exist: “During this time we only found two advertisements that would have been of interest to us. We weren’t able to view the apartment in either of the ads because it was already taken within a few hours.”
Legend:
Young families in particular are leaving the city of Thun because they cannot find an apartment.
Icon Image/Keystone
An evaluation by Immoscout24 for Radio SRF shows that Thun has relatively fewer apartment advertisements on the online platform than other Bernese cities such as Biel or Bern. And the ads are only online for a short time: in Thun it’s only 30 days. In Biel, on the other hand, it is around 50 days.
Legend:
Extraordinary queue: in 2016 there was a huge rush for new apartments in the city of Zurich.
key stone
According to the Federal Statistical Office, the vacancy rate in Zurich is the same as in Thun: it is 0.17 percent.
But the housing shortage is expressed differently: there are long queues when viewing apartments. Hundreds of people want to visit the apartments. An image that is not known in Thun.
After all, many apartments in Thun are given out “underhand”, without a public viewing appointment, and they don’t even appear on an internet platform.
The solution to the housing problem is obvious: new housing must be built. Fast. But: “Nothing that has to do with building is quick,” says the expert Scognamiglio. Of course, the Thun city planner Susanne Szentkuti also knows this: “Yes, we have some catching up to do.”
Extremely few new apartments have been built in recent years, which is the reason for the housing shortage today. The city now wants to remedy the situation by means of a local planning revision, among other things. “We are now creating the legal basis so that more can be built again.” In concrete terms, this means that in the future there will be more options for zoning and the existing settlement area will be denser. A zoning to the outside, however, is not an option: “We still have good reserves inside without losing the quality of life,” says Szentkuti.
Tuna is popular. Not just since today. The low vacancy rate is also not a new phenomenon, Thun has always been below the Swiss average for several years.
But now many – especially young families – have no other option but to move to the countryside. This worries the city, as do the two largest parties in parliament.
“It is not written anywhere that you have the right to live in Thun,” says Valentin Borter, President of SVP Thun. “But it is still the task of politics to provide enough living space.” It is also important to the SP that there are more apartments in Thun. But not at any price, says co-group president Adrian Christen: “Above all, we want affordable housing to be available – apartments that can also be paid for with lower incomes.”