Some two dozen places in Switzerland have what distinguishes them from the rest – characteristics that attract the rich and hence help boost prices of real estate. Here’s a list.
UBS on Thursday presented a study of the price trajectory in the top segment of Swiss real estate. The most expensive properties are to be found along the shores of Lake Geneva.
Cologny, on outskirts of Geneva, boasts the highest prices in the whole of Switzerland – luxury homes come attached with a tag of more than 35,000 Swiss francs ($34,732) per square meter. St. Moritz and Gstaad are in a similar league, while Lake Zurich luxury homes cost some 20,000 to 30,000 francs per square meter.
A Luxury Ranking
The list of 25 Swiss cities and towns that can rightly claim to be favorite haunts of the rich is a by-product of the UBS study. These 25 towns will likely attract the attention of private bankers and wealth managers, because they obviously offer rich pickings.
UBS established a number of rankings of criteria that are relevant to this small but exclusive group of people.
1. Size of Luxury Segment
The higher the number of luxury homes, the bigger the market – UBS chose 20,000 francs per square meter as its benchmark. Everything that costs more counts as luxury property.
The top 5 are:
1. Cologny
2. St. Moritz
3. Verbier
4. Kilchberg
5. Gstaad
2. Costs: Taxes and Lump-Sum Taxation
The average tax paid is generally lower in German-speaking Switzerland than in the Italian- (Lugano) and French-speaking (Geneva) parts. The cities of Zurich and Geneva however have fairly elevated local taxes, while the communities in the near vicinity generally score with a low rate. Apart from the five cantons of Zurich, Basel, Basel Landschaft, Schaffhausen and Appenzell Ausserrhoen, all cantons know the so-called lump-sum tax, whereby the rich citizen agrees with the tax authority about a «reasonable» annual amount to be paid.
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