Switzerland Student Housing (PBSA) Market Report 2026

Savills' Spotlight: European Student Housing report puts Switzerland's national PBSA provision rate at 11% (just 3% in Bern and 6% in Basel, the tightest cantons surveyed), but an exact Switzerland-specific bed count, market-size (TAM) or compound annual growth rate (CAGR) was not found published by Savills, Knight Frank, CBRE or JLL. Switzerland's student housing sector is instead dominated by non-profit cooperatives and university or foundation residences: WOKO (Studentische Wohngenossenschaft Zurich), a cooperative founded in 1956 and formally established in 1972 with over 4,000 rooms across Zurich, Winterthur and Wadenswil; JUWO (Jugendwohnnetz), leasing approximately 3,000 rooms to young adults in Zurich; FMEL (Fondation Maisons pour Etudiants Lausanne), a joint foundation with nearly 5,000 beds by autumn 2026; and Cite Universitaire de Geneve (CUG), an 850-bed, State of Geneva-subsidized foundation. No commercial institutional PBSA operator (of the Scape, Unite, Nido type common in the UK and Australia) was confirmed to be present, an absence-of-evidence finding rather than a verified zero.