ReMoTe-S. Residential Mobility of Tenants in Switzerland: An Agent-Based Model

Sustainable housing is a key priority for Switzerland. To provide both environmentally and socio-culturally sustainable housing, Swiss property owners need to navigate the complex and context-specific system that articulates the match between households’ preferences and the dwellings available to them—i.e., residential mobility. In response to this need, this paper outlines ReMoTe-S, an agent-based model of tenants’ residential mobility in Switzerland. The model design is based on empirical research conducted with the tenants of three multifamily housing providers. It accounts for the life course of dwellings and households, during which the latter attempt to maximise their satisfaction, which is calculated as the correspondence between their desired housing functions (e.g. a status symbol) and the functions of dwellings. To illustrate the model’s potential uses, we explore the sensitivity of its outputs to changes in dwellings’ and buildings’ qualitative and quantitative features by looking at two key indicators of housing sustainability: floor space per capita and vacancy rate. We firstly observe that a supply dominated by medium-to-large dwellings and the application of less strict occupancy rules can result in housing underoccupancy. Secondly, it emerges that certain combinations of housing features engender a lower vacancy rate inasmuch as they more successfully generate housing functions. We conclude that by enabling housing providers to explore the complex human-environment interactions of the housing system, ReMoTe-S can be used to inform a sustainable management of housing stock.