Legal aspects of renting in Switzerland #74
Conversation
shardulc
left a comment
shardulc
left a comment
There was a problem hiding this comment.
Thanks, this will be super useful! Left a few minor comments. Beyond those, there is just some formatting and proofreading that I will take care of before merging.
| Legal aspects of renting in Switzerland | ||
| ======================================= |
There was a problem hiding this comment.
Instead of making this a separate page, I propose adding it to the "Accommodation" page. What do you think?
| This page provides a brief overview of some legal aspects of apartment rental in Switzerland, in the hopes that it will help you navigate them in the future. | ||
|
|
||
| ## Lease takeovers | ||
| In many countries, one can cancel one’s lease at any date as long as a certain notice period is respected. In Switzerland, this is usually not the case. A typical lease is valid for one year, and tacitly renewed. When you want to leave, you can only do so at its next term, and you also need to inform the landlord 3 months in advance of your intention of moving out. So, if you have moved into an apartment on 21.06.2020, and you want to move out in 2023, you will have to pay rent until 21.06.2023, and your notice should be received by your landlord no later than 21.03.2023 (https://bail.ch/bail/page/faq/10). |
There was a problem hiding this comment.
Nice that you have inline references. I personally find it quite useful when reading such articles.
When I merge this, I'm planning to rewrite all reference links in the following format:
no later than 21.03.2023 (bail.ch).
no later than 21.03.2023 ([bail.ch](https://bail.ch/bail/page/faq/10)).
That way, the URL doesn't distract from the text and the link indicates where it goes (unlike e.g. linking the word "here"). I think I'll keep footnotes only for tangential remarks and not for sources. Is that okay with you?
| ## Lease takeovers | ||
| In many countries, one can cancel one’s lease at any date as long as a certain notice period is respected. In Switzerland, this is usually not the case. A typical lease is valid for one year, and tacitly renewed. When you want to leave, you can only do so at its next term, and you also need to inform the landlord 3 months in advance of your intention of moving out. So, if you have moved into an apartment on 21.06.2020, and you want to move out in 2023, you will have to pay rent until 21.06.2023, and your notice should be received by your landlord no later than 21.03.2023 (https://bail.ch/bail/page/faq/10). | ||
|
|
||
| Luckily, there is a workaround for that: lease takeovers. If you can find a suitable (i.e. creditworthy) person who is willing to take over your lease at an earlier date, then you will be released from your obligation to honour the contract until its term. In order for that to work, that tenant needs to actually sign the lease. The landlord is free to refuse the new tenant you propose, but if they are unable to provide a legally valid reason (e.g. “this person’s salary is too low for the rent”), then you will be released from the contract. They may try to intimidate you into staying in the apartment until the end of the term by saying that they will refuse anyone you propose, but that is not legal. |
There was a problem hiding this comment.
Do you know what reasons are legally valid?
| ## Rent increases | ||
| While you stay in an apartment, your rent cannot change arbitrarily. However, under specific circumstances, it may come to change. Rent variations throughout a lease are indexed on the reference mortgage rate[^mortgage] and the consumer price index (IPC)[^IPC]. The former keeps track of the average mortgage rent across banks in the country at a given time. It is updated every 3 months, and is clipped to the nearest multiple of 0.25%. One can check its evolution [here](https://www.bwo.admin.ch/bwo/fr/home/mietrecht/referenzzinssatz/entwicklung-referenzzinssatz-und-durchschnittszinssatz.html). The latter is a measure of inflation. | ||
|
|
||
| Whenever these indices change, your rent can change. In practice, the IPC increases If they increase, it allows your landlord to increase your rent. Conversely, if they decrease, you are entitled to request a decrease in the rent. In either case, the new rent will be effective at the next term of your contract (usually your move-in date). |
There was a problem hiding this comment.
Unfinished sentence: "In practice, the IPC increases […]"
| - Increase of the reference mortgage rate: in the current conditions, this induces a 3% increase per 0.25% of increase in the mortgage rate[^mortgage_increase]. $\Delta R = \frac{\text{new rate} - \text{old rate}}{0.25} \times 0.03 \times R$ | ||
| - Increase of the IPC: 40% of the relative increase of the index can be applied to your rent: $\Delta R = \frac{\text{new index} - \text{old index}}{\text{old index}} \times 0.4 \times R$ |
There was a problem hiding this comment.
Unfortunately I don't think we have a LaTeX-HTML thing on the website 😢 Can you rewrite this using just Unicode characters? Like × and Δ. I use symbl.cc to browse characters.
| Likewise, some leases are staggered: The rent is typically low in the first year, then gradually increases over a 5-year period. In that case, it is also not possible[^staggered] to ask for a rent decrease when the rates go down. | ||
|
|
||
| ## Challenging a rent increase | ||
| If you deem a rent increase abusive, then you can choose to challenge it. In that case, you must do so within 30 days of receiving the notice, by addressing a letter to the “Commission de conciliation” of your préfecture. ASLOCA also provides a template letter. Note that for the letter to be valid, it should be signed by all the signatories of the lease, including your guarantor if you have one. |
There was a problem hiding this comment.
Wouldn't the first step be to talk to your landlord before trying an official challenge? 😅
There was a problem hiding this comment.
Maybe it is worth mentioning at some point that starting any official process will break goodwill with your landlord and it may be better to at least try to resolve it informally beforehand.
There was a problem hiding this comment.
IMHO that depends on whether your landlord is a person or a corporation. Your goodwill with Bernard Nicod (or other such large corporations) is permanently frozen at zero, so you don't have to worry about breaking it :-)
|
|
||
| ⚠️It may happen that the landlord simply doesn’t come to the mediation. In that case, you will be allowed by the préfecture to take the landlord to court. If so, make sure you have a case before proceeding and seek legal advice, as the process will likely last long and be very costly. | ||
|
|
||
| In any case, after starting a procedure against your landlord, you are protected from eviction for a period of 3 years[^3ans]. A resiliation of your lease within that period may be considered as retaliation, so it is unlikely that this will happen. |
There was a problem hiding this comment.
I think the usual English term for résiliation is ‘termination’ 😁
| ## Challenging the initial rent | ||
| Similarly to a rent increase, if you spot something in the lease agreement that seems illegal, then you can challenge the initial rent within 30 days after signing the lease. The challenge is justified if one of the following conditions is met: | ||
| The rent is increased by more than 10% compared to the previous tenant[^10%] | ||
| You signed the lease under duress. This does not necessarily mean you need to prove that you were held at gunpoint when signing the contract, it is justified when there are too few available apartments in your area. More specifically, if the 3-year average vacancy rate in your city is less than 1.5% (which is the case almost everywhere), that qualifies as duress. In Lausanne, the average vacancy rate is around 0.5%[^vacancy] |
There was a problem hiding this comment.
So essentially you can always challenge the initial rent in Lausanne? And what can you demand from the landlord in such a case: that you pay exactly what the previous tenant paid, or something else? Do you know of any cases where this condition was used for a challenge?
| ## Lease fees | ||
| When applying for a flat, it is common that you have to fill out and sign a form for the rental agency, which states that you will pay a fee (typically around 200 CHF) in case your application is selected and you choose not to sign the lease. This is a common scare tactic from agencies to try and prevent people applying to many places and only choosing once they get accepted. Under Swiss law, one can retract from negotiations at any point in time until the contract is signed, so you cannot be asked to pay a fee simply from stopping negotiations. If you refuse an apartment you applied to and the agency sends you an invoice for this fee, you should ask them to justify which costs *you* specifically incurred them. If they cannot provide that (and they probably won’t), then they have no legal basis to ask for that fee[^withdrawal1][^withdrawal2]. | ||
|
|
||
| Similarly, some agencies may ask for an administrative fee to be paid by the tenant for establishing the contract. This should also not be paid by the tenant[^rulv] |
There was a problem hiding this comment.
It would be great if you had concrete templates of how to refuse or challenge such fees.
There was a problem hiding this comment.
One more fee you don't need to pay: when you leave earlier than planned (by giving a dossier of someone who can take over), agencies will claim you need to pay a fee for that, you don't. A friend of mine just got that fee waived by calling the agency and saying she doesn't need to pay this.
Agencies know what they're asking is illegal, so I don't think they'll fight much, they just hope people don't know their rights. :/
There was a problem hiding this comment.
True ! You can also just ignore that invoice, and they should eventually drop it. This is what happened in our case when moving out of Lausanne.
| ## Lease takeovers | ||
| In many countries, one can cancel one’s lease at any date as long as a certain notice period is respected. In Switzerland, this is usually not the case. A typical lease is valid for one year, and tacitly renewed. When you want to leave, you can only do so at its next term, and you also need to inform the landlord 3 months in advance of your intention of moving out. So, if you have moved into an apartment on 21.06.2020, and you want to move out in 2023, you will have to pay rent until 21.06.2023, and your notice should be received by your landlord no later than 21.03.2023 (https://bail.ch/bail/page/faq/10). | ||
|
|
||
| Luckily, there is a workaround for that: lease takeovers. If you can find a suitable (i.e. creditworthy) person who is willing to take over your lease at an earlier date, then you will be released from your obligation to honour the contract until its term. In order for that to work, that tenant needs to actually sign the lease. The landlord is free to refuse the new tenant you propose, but if they are unable to provide a legally valid reason (e.g. “this person’s salary is too low for the rent”), then you will be released from the contract. They may try to intimidate you into staying in the apartment until the end of the term by saying that they will refuse anyone you propose, but that is not legal. |
There was a problem hiding this comment.
This is not the same thing as a "sublet"/"sublease", right? You could clarify that in the text.
|
Could you also go through #41 and mark which points this PR covers? If you want to also cover some of the others, feel free. |
|
|
||
| Whenever these indices change, your rent can change. In practice, the IPC increases If they increase, it allows your landlord to increase your rent. Conversely, if they decrease, you are entitled to request a decrease in the rent. In either case, the new rent will be effective at the next term of your contract (usually your move-in date). | ||
|
|
||
| :warn: In case of a rent decrease, it is your own responsibility to request the rent decrease, the landlord will not do it for you. You should always request it if applicable. It not only affects your rent, but the one the next tenants will pay. |
There was a problem hiding this comment.
It's worth saying that some landlords are dumb forgetful and will have you sign a contract with a dated IPC. You are fully within your rights to request a rent change immediately upon moving in if that's the case.
|
Hey @bathal1, just bumping this in case you have some time before the semester starts again :) |
3 participants
Hi !
I wrote a bit on various legal things relating to renting a place in Switzerland, which I had to find out on my own at some point, and thought they may be useful to others. Let me know what you think !