Behind the Scenes at GenossenSchaffen

Since August 2023, we’ve been running the website www.GenossenSchaffen.ch. There we provide information about available cooperative apartments in Zürich and offer tips on new-build projects, the application process, and much more. Over the past 1.5 years, we’ve learned a great deal about the cooperatives in Zürich, done a lot of research, taken photos, written content, and of course written quite a bit of code. After all, a huge amount of effort goes into the platform. With this blog post, we’re taking you behind the scenes and giving you an insight into our work.

‍

Listings for available cooperative apartments

One of the most popular features on our website is our search subscription for available cooperative apartments in Zürich. We monitor all cooperatives in the canton of Zürich that post listings and send available apartments to our users in real time. A lot of this runs automatically with algorithms, but they need constant updates. Cooperatives regularly change how they post listings or migrate entire websites. Or they switch from Homegate to Newhome. And so on. Every week we roll out updates so the search subscription truly delivers all available cooperative apartments in Zürich to you. Ideally, you won’t notice any of this work and can simply enjoy the emails with links to available cooperative apartments.

‍

New-build projects – we search, you find

‍

A very popular section on our website is the list of new-build projects. We monitor all new-build projects (including replacement builds) of the cooperatives in the canton of Zürich and publish the key facts on our website. That doesn’t happen automatically, of course. We painstakingly hunt down the projects by hand on websites that are sometimes very hard to find — we regularly spend many hours on this in the evenings. Once found, we then check the project websites manually on an ongoing basis and update our list accordingly. When a rental period is announced, we email subscribers to the search subscription with a heads-up. A second email goes out a few minutes before leasing starts. Since this is not always known exactly, we monitor certain new-build projects very closely. It goes so far that on certain days we get up very early and refresh the website continuously, so we can sound the alarm as soon as the rental portal opens. This ensures our subscribers can be the very first to apply. For many, it has already worked.

‍

‍

The blog – info on neighborhoods and more

‍

At the request of our Instagram followers, we discuss the different neighborhoods of Zürich and their cooperative apartments in detailed blog posts. We invest a lot of time in this. On the one hand, we visit the neighborhoods and cooperatives to get a feel for them on site (and take photos). We do this on weekends, since we work at our other jobs during the week. Alongside the photos and videos, we study the websites of the different cooperatives to extract important information and present it so that our users can very quickly learn how and where to get an apartment. In addition to these blog posts about Zürich’s 34 neighborhoods, we also occasionally write about other topics, such as the various leasing processes for new-build projects, specific cooperatives, or statistics we’ve collected. You can imagine this takes a lot of time. We’re therefore always pleased to see that the blog posts are read regularly and provide value.

‍

Website updates: new features for everyone

‍

‍

Beyond the new-build projects and the blog, you’ll also find many other details about available cooperative apartments in Zürich on our website. After months of work, we were able to publish our list of nearly 100 cooperatives in summer 2024. We worked on this feature in the evenings for weeks. The collection isn’t just links; it also includes information on the number of apartments and their location. So if you don’t want to use the search subscription, you can use this list to search for listings quite efficiently yourself.

Some cooperatives still maintain waiting lists — we list them all on our website. Because application openings and closures happen from time to time, this section also needs a lot of attention. We regularly check the list for completeness and up-to-dateness. By the way: if a waiting list reopens after a long pause, we send our subscribers a notification by email. That was recently the case at Baugenossenschaft Wiedikon (it has since closed again).

Finally, we also regularly invest time in other sections of the website, for example the application tips and the interactive map featuring the apartments from the past 30 days. This ensures that you’ll truly find everything about cooperative apartments in Zürich on our platform.

‍

Genossen Schaffen Support

‍

‍

We receive many inquiries about cooperative apartments both on Instagram and via the contact form and email. Some questions are very specific and relate to particular needs (e.g., wheelchair, IV disability pension), others are a bit more general. We make every effort to answer questions as thoroughly as possible. That, of course, takes a lot of time. One of the most common questions from users, by the way, is about keeping dogs. That’s a really difficult topic, because the vast majority of cooperatives do not allow dogs.

‍

‍

Conclusion: There’s a lot going on here!

‍

We hope this article has helped you get a picture of what goes on behind the scenes with us. We do most of it in the evenings and on weekends, since we’re both employed and have a child. What really motivates us are the many messages we receive from happy former subscribers. Every time it says “Cooperative apartment found,” it makes us very happy. We always welcome feedback, ideas, and suggestions as well — whether on Instagram, Facebook, or via email.