Zurich Residents Speak Out as Duplicate Images Flood Digital Property Listings

A growing number of Zurich renters say they are losing time and money to a practice that has quietly taken hold on Swiss property platforms: the use of duplicate, recycled, or mismatched images in rental listings. Tenants describe turning up to viewings on Langstrasse or in Albisrieden, only to find that the apartment bears no resemblance to the photographs that drew them there.

The problem matters right now because the city's housing shortage has reached a documented crisis point. According to the City of Zurich's most recent housing statistics, the residential vacancy rate sat at approximately 0.07 percent in 2025 — one of the lowest among major European cities. With fewer than one in a thousand apartments sitting empty, prospective renters have little room for error. A wasted Saturday-morning viewing on Badenerstrasse is not an inconvenience; for many, it is the difference between signing a lease or spending another month in a sublet.

The Swiss Tenants' Association, the Mieterinnen- und Mieterverband (MV), has fielded an increasing number of complaints related to misleading listing imagery on platforms including Homegate and ImmoScout24. The MV's Zurich regional office, based near Central, has been advising members to screenshot listings and document discrepancies before any viewing, a precaution that would have seemed unnecessary five years ago.

From Wiedikon to Oerlikon: What Renters Are Experiencing

The pattern of complaints is geographically wide. Renters in Wiedikon, a district where average asking rents for a three-room flat can exceed CHF 2,800 per month according to cantonal data from 2025, describe listings that show bright, renovated kitchens attached to addresses where the actual kitchen has not been updated since the 1990s. In Oerlikon, where the city has poured investment into new residential development around the recently expanded Glattpark zone, house-hunters report images taken from newer neighbouring units being used to represent older stock.

One renter who searched for a flat in the Kreis 4 and Kreis 5 areas for nearly four months said she began reverse-image-searching every listing as a matter of routine. She found the same interior photograph appearing in listings for properties on at least three different streets. She reported the discrepancy to the platform but received no response within two weeks. She eventually secured a flat through the cooperative housing organisation ABZ, the Allgemeine Baugenossenschaft Zürich, which operates under stricter listing standards for its members.

The issue is partly structural. Swiss law under the Obligationenrecht does not impose a specific legal obligation on private landlords or agencies to verify that listing images correspond to the actual property being advertised. Consumer protection provisions exist, but enforcement against individual landlords placing a single misleading listing has proved impractical. The cantonal consumer protection office in Zurich confirmed it received complaints about digital property advertising in 2025, though it did not provide a specific figure for image-related cases at the time of publication.

What Tenants Can Do Now

The MV recommends that anyone searching for a flat in Zurich use Google Reverse Image Search or a tool such as TinEye before committing to a viewing. If a photograph appears across multiple listings or matches an image traceable to a different property or a stock photo library, that is a signal worth acting on before making the trip to Altstetten or Höngg.

Homegate, which is owned by the Swiss Marketplace Group and is one of the two dominant property portals in Switzerland, has said it is developing automated detection tools for duplicate imagery, though a firm rollout date has not been publicly confirmed. ImmoScout24 operates a user-flagging system that allows renters to report suspicious listings directly.

Housing cooperatives, which account for roughly a quarter of Zurich's rental stock according to city planning documents, remain largely insulated from the problem because their allocation processes are governed by waiting-list and points-based systems rather than competitive open-market listings. For everyone else hunting in Zurich's private market, the advice from the MV is straightforward: treat every photograph as unverified until you are standing in the room.