Sales advice for a Zurich home-seller to find a builder

Visas, Permits, Passports and Naturalization
1
Hey everyone.

We are planning to bring about the end to our 6 year adventure of enjoying life in Europe/Zurich in 2024. We want to sell our primary home here near Wetzikon as we cut ties so we do not have to deal with trying to rent it out from overseas and we recover our downpayment.

When we bought it 5 years ago, the sellers told us they had a few offers from apartment builders as the plot size is sufficient for a builder to put up a few units; but they preferred to sell to a family to live in it instead of a business to profit off of it.

It seems the rest of the homes in the neighborhood when changing hands have been totally knocked down and rebuilt into apartments or new homes so I am not interested in investing time and money with last minute improvements and touch-ups if the buyer has the intentions to completely rebuild it and further investments will not result in a materially higher sales price.

Ideally, we could find a few of these types of points of contact so we could structure a sale to them, not worry about sprucing up the place for them, and then rent it back from them for a few months so we can take this out of our critical path and recapture the downpayment and any gains and have that readily available for home shopping in the US.

To that end, does anyone have points of contact for builders, developers, and wanna be property lords in Zurich to share so we can discuss our property with them?

If we cannot find an easy and financially fair outcome with that path, we would go the more traditional route of sprucing it up and putting it on the wider market and advertising to the general public and maybe even a realtor.

[Other key info that may be relevant: I have sold 4 homes as DIY seller in US so familiar with process from US perspective, we bought the home from a DIY Swiss seller without an agent so been through CH process, best friend here is a Swiss lawyer (free advice), I would rather not pay a realtor commission unless they cover their costs and more, timeline is 6-12 months.)

Any other helpful advice is always appreciated.

Thanks as always.

2
Maybe just put out an advertisement and they will find you.

I'm assuming there might not be as much demand now that financing is much more expensive.

3
Yeah, that makes sense Phil. Will look into going that route as an option after the holidays and if I cannot find a list of contacts with some success.

4
Maybe try a search with "wir kaufen zum abreissen und neu bauen" or similar.

5
Just publish a lot of good photos, a drone-shot or two and mention the Ausnützungsziffer so the buyer can see just how large a potential new build can get.

There are still buyers - when the location is right.

6
I'd consider using an agent. Talk to a couple of these. They should understand the potential and insulate you from interested buyers. Of course you have to pay for this. If your purchase was only 5 years ago, you'd probably anyway not be able to keep much profit (Grundstückgewinnsteuer). It may also be so that you were told a tale about its development potential when you bought the place.

7

Thank you.

Regarding taxes, I was curious about that. I (think) I found the right link for that and selling here is entirely punitive. Maybe there is enough left to buy a coffee for the wife and I as we board the plane home.

https://www.zh.ch/de/steuern-finanze…stb-225-1.html

I really hope that prior seller was not lying as you say. That would really be a disappointment. I could see the husband lying to us but his wife was so over-the-top helpful to us and genuine I would like to think she would not have allowed him to fib in front of her when we all met. But stranger things have happened.