The Mulklick view, alongside UBS Asset Management’s June 2026 Swiss outlook.

Where our read aligns with the street, where we see it differently, and why the decisive information sits one level below the house-view lens.

The two views at a glance 6 THEMES

The figures, in context

Avg mortgage rate closed 2025 at 1.32% — just 6 bps below the threshold that pushes the reference rate to 1.5%. The next move in in-contract rents may be upward.

01 Where we agree with UBS

The starting point is shared: Switzerland is structurally short of housing, and that shortage is the defining condition of the market rather than a passing phase.

UBS reports that building permits recovered to almost 41,000 units on a rolling annual basis in the first quarter of 2026, while completions continued to lag — the gap between authorization and keys-in-hand measured in years, not quarters. That is precisely the supply lag our own work describes, and UBS’s figure (drawing on the Federal Statistical Office and Bauinfo) is the cleanest single data point for it. UBS expects supply scarcity to keep shaping the market; we would put it more strongly — scarcity is now the operating condition, not temporary noise.

We also share the read on financing. UBS notes the SNB is expected to hold its policy rate through 2026 with inflation around 0.6%, well within the 0–2% target band. Cheaper money supports the market without loosening it — a point our Pulse report frames as the Swiss paradox of 2026.

02 Where UBS sharpens the picture

On rents, UBS quantifies the deceleration we flagged qualitatively. It reports asking-rent growth of 1.8% in 2025 against 4.7% in 2024 (Wüest Partner), with Southern Switzerland the only region where asking rents fell — around 1.5% — while Eastern and Central Switzerland ran hottest at 2.7% and 2.5%. That regional split maps directly onto the corridor logic in our municipality ranking: pressure is not uniform, it follows connectivity and jobs.

On in-contract rents, UBS adds a detail worth watching. The mortgage reference rate sits at 1.25% after two cuts in 2025, but the underlying average mortgage rate closed the year at 1.32% — just six basis points below the threshold that would push the reference rate back up to 1.5%. With long-term rates having risen, the next move in in-contract rents may be upward. That is a concrete tension a tenant or landlord should understand before signing.

On capital growth, UBS gives a second, more conservative house number to sit beside the transaction-price forecasts we already cite. After 3.2% appreciation in 2025, it expects roughly 2.1% residential capital growth in 2026, with commercial far lower — around 0.2% for offices and 0.6% for retail. The figures look lower than the price forecasts in our Pulse report because they measure a different thing: capital growth on standing investments, not transaction prices. Both can be true at once, and citing both gives a fuller picture.

03 Where we see it differently

Two differences are worth stating plainly.

First, commercial. UBS is quietly more constructive on commercial real estate than our residential-led framing. Its argument is coherent: with residential facing increasing regulation — it names Zurich’s Wohnschutzinitiative — and commercial offering higher running yields and inflation-linked leases, commercial looks attractive on a relative-value basis. We do not dispute the logic. Our emphasis differs because our audience and our data are residential-first, and because we think the clearest mispricings today sit in residential micro-markets. This is a difference of emphasis and vantage point, not of fact.

Second, where value actually sits. This is the substantive one. A house view necessarily operates at the national and sector level: residential versus commercial, active versus passive, Switzerland versus elsewhere. That is the right altitude for an institutional allocator. But it is not where a buyer, seller, or local investor makes or loses money. In a market this tight, the difference between two neighbouring municipalities — tax rate, rail connection, densification headroom, energy profile, renovation state — can be the difference between overpriced and underpriced. That is the level our ranking works at, and it is deliberately below the resolution of any house view.

National house views tell you the tide is coming in. They cannot tell you which harbour to moor in. As asking-rent growth decelerates even while vacancy keeps falling, broad market beta is fading — a point UBS makes for investors through the language of active management, and one we make for every participant through the language of micro-local intelligence. When the market rewarded everyone, averages were enough. Now that it rewards precision, they are not.

That is the gap Mulklick is built to close: turning fragmented Swiss real-estate signals into a coordinated, municipality-level picture. UBS is right that Swiss real estate is an anchor — we would add that the anchor is not evenly weighted.

UBS figures and positions are drawn from UBS Asset Management’s “The Red Thread – Alternatives,” Switzerland real estate outlook, Edition June 2026 (Kerstin Hansen), published 11 June 2026. UBS in turn attributes underlying data to Wüest Partner (rents, capital growth), MSCI (returns), the Federal Statistical Office and Bauinfo (permits, completions, population, hotels) and alphaprop (capital-market transactions).

All UBS-sourced figures are restated here in our own words for commentary and comparison; no UBS text, charts, or tables are reproduced. Mulklick figures are drawn from the sources cited in our Q2 2026 Swiss Real Estate Pulse and municipality ranking, including the FSO, Wüest Partner, and UBS. This note is commentary and does not constitute investment advice.