A parking garage or lot is an income property, and it is valued like one: from the net operating income it produces and the cap rate the market applies. Most owners never see that number until they sell or refinance. This page explains how parking is valued, where the hidden upside usually sits, and gives you a way to run the exact figures for your own address in seconds, for free, without commissioning a paid appraisal first.
Value your parking asset now →The core formula is simple: asset value equals net operating income divided by the capitalisation rate. Net operating income (NOI) is your gross parking revenue, from transient hourly and daily parkers, monthly subscribers, and any commercial rent, minus the cost of running the facility: staff, maintenance, payment and platform fees, insurance and admin. Divide that NOI by the market cap rate and you have the asset value.
Swiss prime commercial net yields sit near 3.0% (IAZI, 2024), but standalone parking trades at a premium to reflect its management intensity and demand swings, so a 5.0% to 5.5% cap rate is a common working assumption. As a reference, institutional parking in Switzerland has returned roughly 6.2% per year in total return since 2002, with Zurich near 8.4% and the Lake Geneva region near 7.5%.
A typical central 100-spot garage:
| Annual net operating income (NOI) | CHF 170,000 |
| Cap rate | 5.2% |
| Implied asset value | CHF 3.3 million |
| NOI added by active management | +CHF 22,000 / yr |
| Additional asset value | +CHF 0.4 million |
The second half of that table is the point. Because value tracks NOI, a modest lift in annual income, achieved with pricing and occupancy rather than construction, is capitalised into a much larger jump in asset value.
The levers are revenue and cost, not more concrete:
Specialist appraisers and parking consultants value assets for a fee and a wait. The Stellos model gives owners, investors and asset managers a sizing estimate in seconds, so you know whether an asset is worth a closer look before you spend anything.
Run your free valuation →The same way as any income property: NOI divided by a cap rate. NOI is gross parking revenue (transient, monthly subscriptions and any commercial rent) minus operating costs. A 100-spot garage with CHF 170,000 NOI at a 5.2% cap rate is worth roughly CHF 3.3 million.
Swiss prime commercial net yields sit near 3.0%, but standalone parking trades at a premium for its management intensity, so 5.0% to 5.5% is a common working assumption depending on city and asset quality. Institutional parking has returned around 6.2% per year total return in Switzerland since 2002.
Value follows NOI, so the levers are pricing, occupancy and cost, not construction. A CHF 20,000 to 30,000 lift in annual NOI is worth roughly CHF 0.4 million to 0.6 million in additional asset value at a 5% cap rate.
It is a sizing estimate, not a formal appraisal. It applies market tariff, occupancy and cap-rate assumptions to your inputs to show the order of magnitude of value and the management upside. For a transaction you still commission a formal valuation.
Gross income and NOI use market assumptions (blended transient and monthly rates, typical occupancy for the location type) applied to your spot count. Asset value is NOI divided by the cap rate (a market-reference assumption; no parking-specific traded cap rate is publicly quoted per city). The optimisation upside is a conservative active-management scenario with no new construction. These are sizing estimates, not an appraisal. Validate independently before committing capital.
This is an operational valuation estimate, not investment advice. Verify all figures independently before making financial or operational decisions.