In real estate lingo, what counts most is ‘location, location, location.’ But in Switzerland, many other factors enter into play when choosing the best place to live, a new analysis reveals.
The analysis in question was carried out by a leading Swiss financial magazine Bilanz, which used 56 different criteria, sub-divided into categories, to rank 966 municipalities with at least 2,000 residents, to determine the ‘best’ one among them.
These were some of the main categories used to rank the comunities:
Real estate prices
Housing construction activity
The vacancy rate for rentals
The proportion of the budget allocated to housing
The unemployment rate
The number of jobs in the service sector
The proportion of young people in the population.
Population growth
The average tax burden
Married couples with or without children, and retirees.
Tax revenue, taxable income.
Accessibility of residents and jobs by public and private cars
The number of doctors, pharmacies, hospitals, primary and secondary schools, shopping centers, grocery stores, and leisure and cultural offerings.
Criminal violations
Risk of earthquakes
Noise exposure and the number of hours of sunshine
And the winner is….
Oberkirch, in canton Lucerne, a community of just over 5,000 people – of whom nearly 12 percent are foreign nationals – got high scores in all the categories.
Not only does it have direct access to Lake Sempach and views of the Alps, but it is also only 21 km from Lucerne, which can be reached in half an hour by both train and car.
Furthermore, “a vibrant community life and a diverse range of sports and cultural activities characterise this community,” according to Bilanz.
As the town’s mayor Raphael Kottmann put it, “Oberkirch is at the heart of things, yet has retained its rural charm.”
What other municipalities made it to the top-10 in the ranking?
Horn (Thurgau) is in the 2nd place, followed, in this order, ¨ by Maienfeld (Graubünden), Altendorf (Schwyz), Freienbach (Schwyz), Zug (Zug), Cham (Zug), Lachen (Schwyz), Hergiswil (Nidwaden), and Feusisberg (Schwyz).
A pattern of ‘inequality’ emerges
All of the top-10 winners are not only located in the same geographical region (central Switzerland), but they are also all in German-speaking part.
You have to scroll all the way down to number 32 – Mies, Vaud – followed by Lutry in Vaud (38), and Collonge-Bellerive, Geneva (51) to get to the towns in the French-speaking cantons.
And the ‘best’ town in Ticino – Sorengo – is all the way down in 176th place, followed, waaay down, by Collina d’Oro (266th) and Paradiso (398th).
Bilanz has not explained why German-speaking communities dominate the ranking to the detriment of other linguistic regions, but it may have nothing to do with the quality of municipalities in those parts.
Instead, it could be because the German-speaking area of Switzerland is proportionally quite a bit larger, and there are more communities to pick from.
© FDFA, Presence Switzerland
And, in all fairness, other communes have scored better in other rankings.
For instance, Zurich, Geneva, and Lausanne were voted ‘world’s smartest’, while in Ticino, Ascona, Bisco Gurin, and Morcote, are ranked among Switzerland’ best villages.’
