Office market Lausanne

The supply of available office space in the Lausanne region has contracted from 70,400 m² at the end of 2022 to 65,300 m² at present, lowering the availability rate from 3.5% to 3.2%. No major projects came onto the market in 2023. The previously newly constructed but as-yet-unleased office spaces in the Lausanne region have benefited from this and are now landing tenants.

Little available office space in the CBD

The supply of available office space in the city of Lausanne is tight at an availability rate of just 2.1%. Nowhere is office space scarcer than in Lausanne’s CBD, where only 10,900 m² of floor area, or just 1.4% of the total stock of office space in that submarket, stands vacant. The scarcity of vacant office spaces exerted upward pressure on the prime rent price level in Lausanne, which rose to CHF 520 per m² per annum from CHF 500 a year earlier.

The Vidy submarket exhibits a persistently low availability rate of 2.0%. A total of 14,000 m² of space in the Rive building formerly occupied by Nespresso has been re-let to other tenants in recent years. Even less vacant office space stands available for lease in the municipality of Pully, where a number of large office spaces have recently been absorbed.

Only 500 m² of floor space is still available there, which equates to a tight availability rate of just 0.6%. This shows that demand is intact even in less central locations, particularly for high-grade office space in areas that offer a high quality of livability.

The supply of available office space in the Lausanne West/Crissier submarket decreased by 5% to 37,000 m² as of end-2023, which equates to 10.9% of the total stock of office space in that area (end-2022: 11.8%). The vacancy rate there thus remains above-average, which owes to the high volume of new construction activity (+60,000 m² over the last two years), though that new office space is now gradually being absorbed.

Growing Biopôle campus

The Leucine building in the Biopôle technology park was completed last summer. It encompasses around 10,000 m² of floor space for offices, laboratories, and services, and sports an underground parking garage. Construction of the Arginin, Valine, and Trypto buildings will be completed by 2025, increasing the number of buildings on the Biôpole campus to 14 (with a total floor area of around 130,000 m²).