Just a fun question really. What's the smallest plot anyone's seen a house built on in Switzerland. I can start this one off because our recent house purchase is a 160m2 house on a 190m2 plot.

Can anyone better that?

you call that small????

are you from Texas?

You don't have to be from Texas to call that small. How the hell did they cram a house on a 190 lot? Is it a five storey?

After seeing a complete room under your outside stairs I can confirm this...

No, it's 3 stories. I can only assume they managed it because it was built before any of the other houses around it. Oh, and by the way, to get to our front door we have right of way over our neighbour's boundary on one side and the neighbour on the other side has right of way over our driveway to use his driveway! I just can't figure out why the plot was so small in the first place.

Currently listed for sale on Homegate, in Wald ZH:

http://www.homegate.ch/kaufen/103860...ault&l=default

6 rooms, over 4 stories, 140m2 living space on...


... 76m2.

A nice little DIY project for someone?

We sold our 2 floored house in Thalwil 4 years ago:
Land area: 176sqm Living area: 126sqm (excludes cellar & attic)...

When it's finished we will have 246m of floor space on a 198m block. There's even room for a backyard.

Wow, looks like small plots aren't that uncommon here after all. Considering how much the Swiss like to be outdoors and always seem to be doing things in their gardens I just didn't expect there to be many houses on such small plots. I think the smallest I've seen when house watching/hunting is around 500sqm.

Our small side garden/yard will be big enough for us to cope with now we're getting older, but still haven't decided what to do with it yet. I'd like to enclose it with a post and wire enclosure so when we get another cat/s they can go outside via a catflap in the stairwell window. If we don't do that though I will probably get some troughs or have raised beds for veggie growing.

And no, not Texas Dino, Oklahoma. The quarter acre plot we had there is enormous compared to this one!

It's hard to adjust to the lack of personal space - but I guess that it's a cultural difference.

I live 'auf dem Land', and still a decent sized garden is a rarity. Perhaps because using one's garden is difficult due to neighbors. One may quitely putter about with a few plants and window boxes, but actually using one's garden as a place to for children to play, for pets to run about, or for adults to entertain is uncommon because of noise restrictions.

Here one rarely sits out and enjoys the outdoors - perhaps because it's too public. A large garden isn't really seen as an advantage to many home buyers.

Not to mention, caring for a large garden with the limited hours available when noise is allowed is difficult. Few people have the equipment (or space to store it) needed to do so. Hence most people put in concrete patios or rock gardens and hire a landscaping firm to do the maintenance.

Given that land runs in the 1500-3500 m2 range, a large garden is a huge expense - especially when one considers that one may not be allowed to use it as one wishes.

I had to laugh - when I spoke to a real estate agent about selling my house he listed among my home's highlights the 'riesigen Garten, geeignet für Hobbybauern'. Huge garden, suitable for hobby farming? It's less than a quarter acre - back home we'd call it a postage-stamp.

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Took a gander at the Geneva area on homegate. There is a house listed with a plot of 22 m2 - but that has to be a mistake. Or at least I hope it is:
http://www.homegate.ch/kaufen/103886...ault&l=default

There is one listed with 'un joli jardin à 60m2 - Is it possible that one excludes the footprint of the house in GE? I doubt you couldn't fit that house on 60m2:
http://www.homegate.ch/kaufen/103843...ault&l=default

Well, I certainly hope the figures are wrong considering the prices they're asking!

Yes, a large garden isn't always a good thing. The house we rented before buying this one sat on just over 1000sqm of land with patio and gravel level, then the lawn sloped up to another flat lawn area before another slope up to hedges which was very difficult for me to try and strim when needed. Evergreen hedge at the back blocked the sun from drying out the grass for mowing a lot of the time and the hedges on one side and at the front needed cutting at least a couple of times a year and all the dropped leaves sweeping up. We did the work ourselves, but it was always a struggle and getting more so as we got older. If it had all been on the same level it would have been easier, but still a large area to cover. Could have bought a ride-on though.

I'm one who loves garden work - I've been looking for a decent sized useable garden for years now - ever since I bought this place, in fact. I need out of the fishbowl, I need a garden I can actually use.

Unfortunately, decent sized gardens are few and far between in this corner of CH. As Switzerland is getting more and more crowded, six houses are being built in the space where one used to stand; tiny plots seem to be the norm - because there isn't room for anything else.