Not one single unoccupied flat or house to be found

Every year the Swiss Federal Office of Statistics undertakes a survey to find out how many empty houses and flats there are in the country. This year this took place on Wednesday 1 June when it was discovered that there was not one single empty house or flat at all in the municipality of Risch-Rotkreuz.
 
The only other municipality in the country where there were likewise no empty houses or flats was Horw in the canton of Lucerne. In this canton as a whole, as of the same afore-mentioned date, there were 1,995 empty units (i.e. houses or flats), corresponding to 1.05% of the total accommodation available, up by 0.93% on last year.
 
It was in the canton of Zug, however, that the fewest empty houses or flats were recorded, just 196 of them, or 0.34%. This compares with 260, or 0.46%, last year. The canton with the highest number of empty units, actually a half-canton, was that of Appenzell-Innerrhoden, where 3.63% of its housing stock remained vacant. As for the Swiss average, at 1.30%, this was the same as what it was at the time of the millennium, when 56,518 units were unoccupied.
 
That there are so few empty properties in Zug is not uncommon, of course. Neither did the latest statistics really come as a surprise to Peter Hausheer, the mayor of Risch, bearing in mind how attractive the municipality is in so many respects.
 
New developments are springing up there all the time, not least on the Suurstoffi site, owned by the Zug Estates AG company. Gabrila Theus, its CFO, was likewise not surprised by the fact that there was not one empty property available in June. “Rotkreuz benefits from a number of aspects such as an excellent infrastructure with much going on in the municipality, not to mention the ease with which one can get to Zurich, Zug and Lucerne, with lots of recreational facilities close by. What is more, thanks to the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts setting up its School of IT there, it will soon establish itself as an important centre of learning,” she said.