Hi all,
we visisted a nice house last weekend in Munchestein. I am wondering how to check if the price they are asking is correct for that location of Munchestein.
Basically I would like to know how much is the price of the land there and how much the house costed 4 years ago (it was built by an architect studio from BS).. to make sure that we are not going to overpay... but I do not know how to get this info. any help?
thanks
sally

Very simple.

I would go to another Estate Agent in the area and ask them for an independent valuation. You will have to pay for the advice but as buying a home is your biggest investment it would be money well spent.

Regards

The other option is to ask your bank to evaluate it before you make an offer. They always do an evaluation before giving a mortgage so this works well.

Good Luck
Nats

The Bank will not give you a valuation on the property and they do not ask for a surveyors report as in the UK.
They do have their formula though.

Do your own research on similar properties in the area.

You can use www.homegate.ch or www.immostreet.ch
With homegate you can get data on the area the property is in avarage prices, price increases compared the Swiss average and they rate the area for different criterea which will give you a lot of useful information.
The data is found by clicking "Comunity Profile" which you will find on each property detail page and next to the location map button.
Example:
http://www.homegate.ch/gemeindeinfo/...606-en-ewg.pdf

Lake views etc can effect the price as well as many others so it's not so easy when you do not know the area.

Good luck

Buying a property in Switzerland is not just for Christmas. It is for a minimum of 5 years, and I would say 10, stay.

You will have to spend months intensively searching out properties and will soon be able to work out the right(ish) price from the square metres, location, outlook etc. You should become an expert yourself...

I can't say were were spoilt for choice in our property search and I am definitely not an expert on the price per m2. We spent 2 years looking for a location - most were on main roads or too far form the station. In that time 2 suitable places came up and both they put in development applications nearby while we were considering it. The outlook is very important and can change if you are next to an undeveloped zone, an old building or a building less than the max. floors restriction (yes they can add floors to existing apartments blocks).

One proposal for the Zug tunnel was right under our house - luckily it turned out to be the most expensive alternative

The bank won't give you a direct valuation...however, what they will tell you how much you can borrow for a mortgage on that house and then tell you what % you can borrow, so effectively telling you their valuation of the house.
We bought last year and it is definitely for at least 10 years as the transaction charges here are a joke...
How can estate agents charge 5%..?..no wonder more and more people here are selling houses here themselves....not difficult to place an ad on Immostreet

The bank wil usualy lend you a MAXIMUM of 80% of their valuation of the property, in these times, i think they may even be around 75%.

As for 5% estate agents....you should have negotiated better, 2-3% is average
.

Thankfully I didn't sell, only bought, but useful to know it is very negotiable on the rates. Our sellers didn't negotiate as the charges were registered on the 'vente a terme'...no wonder their estate agent looked so happy

Ever tried selling or renting your own place? Loads of time wasters, stupid offers and strange people wanting to come and have a look at all hours. Give me an agent any day. Here they even wanted to speak to my mortgage advisor before they allowed me to view a place - shows they only want serious viewings. I am not a sales person either.

My viewing here was conducted with the actual seller because she spoke better English and she didn't sell the place very well at all .

I was offered 2% from 2 different estate agents. I used Homegate where the cost of selling our house was CHF130.00.

Also one agent wanted to put our house on the market for CHF50,000 less than we sold it for privately...

well, I am looking to buy a property since.. mhhmhm let me count ...almost 8 years... by now i have seen houses in different area of BL and know the price in m2 of the land in different area of Binningen, Arlesheim, Oberwil, Therwil and also Riehen and Bettingen, but I never considered Munchstein. and so i am not prepared, i cannot judge if the price is ok, based on the m2 of the land and value of a 4 years old house.
I will definitively have to contact my bank. I know that they can evaluate it pretty well. It is just that I wanted to do this analysis beforehand.
Thanks.
Cheers
Sally

The other thing I would consider is how much you actually like the property. I am not saying that market value is unimportant, but I think it is only one thing to consider (unless the property is solely for investment purposes). If you really like the property and feel it would be a good home for you/your family, then i personally wouldn't be too concerned about its exact value in CHF. I am certainly not talking about paying thousands over the odds, but sometimes I think it is easy to loose sight of the overall goal in house buying.

We recently bought a house (from plan), and made several additions alterations that will definitely not add as much as they cost to the overall value of our home. However although we will probably one day be selling the house, we are also looking at living there for the foreseeable future, and so for us it was worth doing things that will suit us and our family right now. JMHO.

Finding the right house is hard - I wish you luck.

sally - i'm sure you are aware, but generally the banks don't do the valuations for free, unless you reach a prior agreement with them - a specific bank may have a deal with a company you work for. However, I think generally they charge arond 700chf's for the valuation

good luck with your house search

Both UBS and Credit Suisse checked the value of a house we were interested in free of charge. We did not agree on any engagement.

i can confirm it free of charge. plus depending on their networking they can advice you very well on how much money to offer to the seller (if you can negotiate the price). it happened to us few years ago. we got to know exactly how much more the lady was asking us for her apartment.

I agree that I do not have to look only at the price of the house .. but other factors count as well.
i am looking since long time to buy an house and only recently we decided that we would build one so that we get exactly what we want. Obviously this take time, patient and more money to invest. in the meantime I found this house, which is close to what we want, but not exactly what we want. if the price is ok and we would not overpaying it, then we might consider to drop our expensive dream to build an house... whcih at the moment seem very far away.