Property transparency in Geneva: the end of transaction publication in the FAO?

For some thirty years, Geneva has had a feature that is rare in Switzerland: every property transaction entered in the land register is published in the Feuille d’avis officielle (FAO), with the sale price and the identity of the buyer and the seller. Publishing this type of data remains optional for each canton, and several cantons have restricted or abandoned it over time, such as Vaud, which stopped publishing these transfers online in March 2022. A bill currently on the agenda of the Geneva Grand Conseil could put an end to this practice. The debate is an old one, but it returns with particular intensity this autumn 2026.

A transparency mechanism inherited from a property crisis

The publication of transactions in the FAO did not come about by chance. It was introduced after a highly speculative property crisis that plunged the canton of Geneva into a serious economic situation, forcing the authorities to bail out the Banque cantonale de Genève to the tune of several billion, as the bank had granted hundreds of mortgage loans imprudently. Since then, the FAO has listed changes in the land register, a tool consulted by notaries as well as investigative journalists and private individuals wishing to check a market price.

Since 2017, the Geneva FAO has been fully digital and freely accessible online, which makes it all the easier for third parties to use this data, whether media outlets, property valuation tools or specialist platforms.

The bill: personal safety versus market transparency

The bill currently under consideration is sponsored by a group of twelve members of parliament, mainly from the Centre and the PLR. Its official title is explicit: it aims to protect the physical safety of Geneva’s residents by ending the publication of the price and the names of the persons involved in property transactions on the FAO website.

The initiative originated with Suissenégoce, the umbrella organisation of commodity traders, which cites a wave of violent burglaries targeting commodity traders to justify the text. The argument put forward is that publishing the identity of buyers of valuable properties, together with their address, would make it easier to identify potential targets.

What the committee’s work shows

The matter was examined by the Grand Conseil’s Economic Affairs Committee, which heard several figures, including the Attorney General, Olivier Jornot. In his capacity as head of the judiciary, he opposed the bill, considering that the security argument does not stand up to the facts, even though the Geneva property market remains under strong pressure owing to the housing shortage.

This is not a new issue: according to Le Temps, a first attempt at abolition was reportedly led by the same Olivier Jornot sixteen years earlier, when he sat as a member of parliament. The text was adopted at the time, buried in a broader reform of the law implementing the Civil Code, before the Grand Conseil reversed its decision in 2011 by a clear majority, in response to criticism highlighting the usefulness of this tool in combating money laundering and abusive rents.

A proposed compromise on the rental market

In response to the concerns raised, Asloca, the tenants’ association, proposed a compromise that would partly spare the rental market from the effects of this law. If adopted, the final text would therefore primarily target sales transactions, particularly in the high-end segment, rather than all property data published in the FAO.

Issues beyond security

The debate goes beyond the question of personal protection alone. Several stakeholders have highlighted the possible repercussions of such an abolition:

• Combating money laundering: publishing transactions makes it possible to detect unusual sales patterns or suspicious arrangements, a use noted both during the 2011 debate and by Transparency International Suisse, which has publicly warned of the risks of greater opacity in the Geneva property market.
• Journalism: FAO data feeds investigations into the property market, speculation and the practices of certain economic players.
• Valuation and price transparency tools: several online services rely directly on FAO publications to build sales histories by commune, useful to private individuals and industry professionals alike for placing a property within its local market.

Where does the matter stand today?

At this stage, the bill has passed the committee stage and is on the agenda of the Grand Conseil. No date for a plenary vote had been made public at the time of writing. Given the 2011 precedent, adoption in committee does not necessarily predict the final outcome, as a broader public debate could still shift positions.

Key points

The question of publishing property transactions in the FAO illustrates a classic tension between two legitimate imperatives: protecting privacy and personal safety on the one hand, and the transparency of a market already under strong pressure on the other. Owners, buyers and industry professionals would do well to follow the outcome of this debate, which could reshape access to information on prices in Geneva, at a time when the canton remains marked by a structural housing shortage.