The Assetizer · 20 August 2026
Filling The Swiss Real Estate Financing Gap: A Private Markets Case Study
Switzerland isn't building enough homes, and financing is a big part of why. We talk to GenTwo's Moritz Dörig about a private markets fix.
This newsletter is part of The Assetizer, GenTwo's thought leadership platform.
Rolling hills, splendid lakes, breathtaking mountain views, historic city centers: this is the backdrop for Swiss residential real estate, one of the most attractive and highly priced real estate markets in the world.
But not all is well in the alpine paradise. Despite strong demand, Switzerland isn't building enough. Only around 42,000 new flats went up in 2025, against the 50,000 the Federal Office for Housing says are needed, and the vacancy rate has slipped below 1%, the level the Federal Office defines as a shortage. And even the capital that is flowing is going to the wrong place: the Federal Office notes that investors are concentrating on replacement builds and renovations, which keep the construction industry busy but do little to expand the housing stock. Getting more built means getting capital to the projects that actually add supply, and that is fundamentally a financing question. (For more see the sources at the bottom of the post.)
Recently, we launched a new Swiss real estate product line that, among other things, will provide builders and investors new tools that should help address this issue. Doing that involved a number of innovations that make this in my opinion an excellent example of assetization in action. So I thought it worth a post.
To get more information, I sat down with my colleague Moritz Dörig. As Head of Sales Switzerland Moritz has been intimately involved in developing the new offering. Read on to find out what I learned.
The Great Divide
I started by asking him about the difficulties facing the Swiss market.
"There are several," he says. "On the supply side, there is a growing financing gap driven, among other things, by tighter capital requirements. Banks are still writing the senior piece of the financing, but the layer above that has thinned out. And that's the layer that decides whether a project breaks ground. A developer can have permits, a site, and a buyer pipeline, and still be sitting on a gap of a few million with nowhere to take it. The alternatives for filling it, negotiating direct loans one investor at a time or setting up a fund, are cumbersome and slow. So what we're enabling is completing the capital stack, not substituting for it."
"On the investor side, the capital exists, and investors would happily put it to work here. What's missing is an easy way in. Outside of real estate funds there really aren't any bankable solutions, and funds by their nature cover only a fraction of what's out there. These also come with constraints. You can't use one for project-specific financing, for example. So you have capital that wants in and projects that need it, and no clean way to connect the two."
Three Routes, One Destination
This new issuance engine offers, in Moritz’s words, three "routes” to the market. Access can be via Actively Managed Certificates (AMCs), Credit-Linked Notes (CLNs) or Tracker Certificates.
“Each of these serves a different purpose,” Moritz says. “The AMC is perfect for bundling multiple projects or borrowers into one investment product. This can be in the form of participation in equity performance or debt, or a combination depending on the projects, and it has the advantage that it can be actively managed by the product sponsor. CLNs are for single project debt financing. And Trackers offer single project equity exposure. So there really are quite a lot of options.”
What unites all of these is that they are all bankable certificates with a Swiss ISIN. That means they are easy to buy for the investor, can be held in a normal bank custody account, and are easily tradable in secondary markets (provided, of course, that there are buyers too).
There are a number of advantages for issuers as well, certainly compared to traditional investment and financing structures. GenTwo certificates can be issued within weeks, not the months that funds typically take. And each product is issued off-balance sheet through a dedicated, bankruptcy-remote issuance vehicle, with every product in its own segregated structure.
Filling the Gap
This kind of infrastructure financing gap is by no means limited to Switzerland, nor for that matter to real estate.
As we wrote in our book Assetization, the pattern repeats across the developed world. For most of the post-war era, the things society needs built were paid for by the state. That model is breaking down: public balance sheets are stretched, and banks, constrained by tighter capital rules, have pulled back from exactly the kind of lending that gets projects off the ground.
The result is a vast shortfall. By one estimate, as we cite in the book, the world needs to invest some $94 trillion in infrastructure by 2040 and will fall short by around $15 trillion. That will require private investment. Infrastructure is quietly shifting from a public good funded by taxes to an investable asset class funded by private capital, but the money only flows if the right instruments exist to carry it.
In Switzerland, the hope is that by making it easier to bring private capital to where it is needed, products like this one from GenTwo can benefit builders, investors and ultimately everyone in the country looking for affordable places to live.
Tom Lyons, GenTwo
Sources: