As Swiss Rents Climb, Shared Living Draws Working Professionals and Couples

Written by:

Steve Marcinuk

Date:

09 Jul 2026

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Finding shared housing in European cities has never been straightforward, but the gap between supply and demand has grown sharply in recent years. In Switzerland, as in many urban markets across the continent, the number of people searching for a room vastly outnumbers those offering one. For Safras Rawfal, who experienced this firsthand while studying mechanical engineering and robotics at ETH Zurich, the frustration of navigating outdated rental platforms became the starting point for a new approach.

Rawfal recalls that when he first moved out of his parents’ home during his bachelor’s degree, the platforms available for finding shared housing were poorly designed and behind the times. “At that moment I already knew something was wrong,” he says. “There’s a market gap.”

That observation eventually became Flatable, a proptech platform focused on shared housing that Rawfal launched after completing his master’s degree. The product had already been tested with real users by the time he brought it to market, and the core problem it addresses, a severe mismatch between housing supply and demand, has only intensified since. With Swiss and European rental markets tightening further and shared living expanding beyond its traditional student demographic, the need for better matching tools is growing.

The Matching Problem

Most shared housing platforms operate on basic logic: filter by location, price, and move-in date, then scroll through listings. The result is a process that wastes time for everyone involved and frequently leads to poor outcomes. People apply based on rent and location, show up at viewings that clearly aren’t a good fit, or worse, move in and realize within weeks that the arrangement doesn’t work.

The costs of a failed match are concrete: double rent during an overlap period, the time and energy of moving again, and the flat having to restart its search from scratch. Flatable’s response is an algorithm designed to assess compatibility not just between a person and a property, but between a person, a property, and the existing roommates.

The platform draws on a concept familiar from consumer dating apps, where user decisions progressively inform the system’s recommendations. Hard filters handle non-negotiables like move-in dates and budget, while softer preferences around lifestyle, cleanliness habits, and social style help rank results. “The idea is the more you use Flatable, the better we can provide you with better matches,” Rawfal says. “Ideally, the top ten suggestions we give you are the top ten you should apply to.”

Closing the Feedback Loop

Where most listing platforms end their involvement once a viewing is scheduled, Flatable is building a system to track what happens after someone moves in. Rawfal is building a household management layer into the product that will record when residents move in and out. If someone moves in through Flatable and leaves again within a few weeks, the system flags it as a poor match and works to understand why.

Rawfal describes this as a closed feedback loop, though he’s clear that this component is still in development. The matching platform is live, while the management layer that feeds data back into the algorithm is being built in parallel.

This approach matters because the platform is positioning itself as an end-to-end solution rather than just a listings directory. The goal is a single ecosystem connecting private seekers, private listers, and professional operators.

What Users Actually Do

Observing how people behave inside the app has shaped several product decisions. One early assumption that didn’t hold up was that users would embrace automated viewing scheduling. Instead, people kept defaulting to the in-app chat to arrange viewings directly.

That told the team that even with detailed profiles, people want additional context before committing to a viewing. In response, Flatable is rolling out a feature that prompts applicants to include a short message with each application, and introduces video and voice application options alongside the standard profile. “You have a face, you have a voice, you have a much better feeling for who is applying to your flat,” Rawfal says.

The intent is both to improve match quality and to surface the kinds of questions that standard profile fields don’t yet capture, which can then inform future iterations of the algorithm.

The most consistent request from users, however, is simpler: a web version. The platform is currently mobile-only, and the team is prioritizing a web app as its next major release.

A Market Under Pressure

The demand-side imbalance Flatable is operating within helps explain why better matching matters now. Rawfal estimates the platform currently sees roughly 50 times more room seekers than people offering spaces. That ratio isn’t easing, and it’s reshaping who is looking for shared housing in the first place.

Young professionals with full-time jobs and good salaries are choosing shared living because rent prices make solo apartments impractical or because finding any available unit has become so difficult. “The mentality that shared living is just a thing for young people is changing,” Rawfal notes. “More and more older couples are also getting into shared living,” often to offset rising housing costs by taking in a roommate.

This broadening of the shared housing market creates a more complex compatibility landscape. A couple in their forties sharing a flat with a working professional has different expectations than a group of students, and the platform’s matching logic will need to account for that range as the user base grows.

What Comes Next

Flatable is currently seeking investment to support its next phase of growth. With the web app in progress, the management platform in development, and a growing pipeline of professional housing organizations exploring partnerships with Flatable, the near-term roadmap is focused on building the infrastructure that transforms a matching tool into a full housing ecosystem.

The broader opportunity Rawfal sees is in making shared living a more deliberate choice rather than a fallback. As rental markets in Swiss and European cities remain tight, the distance between a platform that filters listings and one that measurably improves the likelihood of a good match is likely to matter more – not less – to the people using it. Whether Flatable can close that gap depends on how well its feedback loop performs once the management layer is fully operational, and whether the algorithm’s predictions hold up as the user base diversifies beyond its current core.

About the Expert: Safras Rawfal is the CEO of Flatable, a proptech platform focused on shared housing matching, which he launched after completing a master’s degree in mechanical engineering and robotics at ETH Zurich.

This article is based on information provided by the expert source cited above. It is intended for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, or real estate advice. Readers should conduct their own research and consult qualified professionals before making any real estate or financial decisions.