Moving in Switzerland is a complex operation that needs to be very carefully planned and prepared.
How to find a suitable apartment in Switzerland? What is required to sign a rental contract? How to change an old apartment for a new one? What pitfalls exist here, what should you pay special attention to? A journalist from the portal Swissinfo.ch went through this entire process from start to finish.
They say that one move is equivalent to two fires. And this is indeed true, well, maybe only in Switzerland a move equals not two, but one fire, all because of brilliantly organized logistics. Although, in any case, changing apartments is a very difficult operation. First of all, because the supply on the Swiss housing market is huge, and choosing a home that exactly meets your personal needs is always very difficult. But first, let's take a walk through a typical Swiss apartment.
Immediately striking are the white painted walls, which are light, economical, do not collect dust, and are easy to make minor repairs on. No floral wallpaper. Sometimes, however, the layout of the apartment can be truly baffling, involuntarily making you ask yourself what the architect was even thinking? But it is necessary to consider that often apartments in their internal structure reflect the peculiarities of social life, which may not be immediately obvious. But more on that later.
So how should you look for an apartment in Switzerland? The answer to this, as to almost any question nowadays, will be the same – the internet is your help! The country has several major websites for searching rental housing (for example, immoscout24.ch or homegate.ch). Their interface allows you to make queries in German, French, Italian, as well as English.
By setting the city district, price category, and desired number of rooms, you will immediately get a whole list of options from these sites, which can be sorted by ascending or descending rental cost. It makes sense to sign up for a free notification subscription on the real estate website, which will inform you by email or any other method about the appearance of an apartment that meets your requests and criteria.
Better to pay
It is necessary to consider that the real estate market in Switzerland is transparent, no "rent without intermediaries" and other realities familiar to us. You need to look for an apartment only through official sources, there are simply no others (personal acquaintances are not considered in this case). Sometimes, however, to great surprise, you can find classic ads with fringes of tear-off numbers on fences, poles, and walls, but this is rather an exception.
Rental properties are managed by official real estate companies, while the apartments themselves can belong to anyone, and this is not so interesting to us in this case, because you will sign the rental contract with the real estate company. After noting a property you like, you can send a request through the site asking for the opportunity to view it.
Apartment viewings can already turn into an interesting adventure: sometimes you will be shown an empty, turnkey apartment. And sometimes it happened that the realtor and five or six interested parties walk through the apartment, stepping over the suitcases and boxes of the person who still lives there and is preparing to move to another apartment, or even to a nursing home (it happened once like that).
Now let's look from the other side. Finding a new apartment is half the battle. The second half of this matter involves preparing your current apartment for return to the management company. Let's say right away – you don't need to do the pre-return preparation yourself. You won't do it right anyway. In our case, a hired special company cleaned our old apartment for two days, costing about 900 francs, but we got a guarantee that the real estate company would accept it back without problems.
By the way, you probably had paintings hanging on the walls, leaving holes, you ran internet cable or painted the walls a different color? You will have to buy a spatula, putty compound, and carefully fill these technical holes, paint the wall back to its original color, and remove the cable. Otherwise, the apartment will not be accepted.
I like to move it
Actually, moving is another rather difficult problem. Over a lifetime, a person accumulates a huge number of things. Maybe it's not immediately noticeable, but try to pack the contents of your desk into one box? And the room? And the whole apartment?
So in this situation, it's better to immediately hire a logistics company. Of course, you will have to pack yourself, and the services of such a company can be very expensive, but sometimes it's better to pay to be sure that you can move both belongings and furniture in one day without breaking or damaging anything. Without such a company, we definitely would not have been able to survive the move with minimal nervous energy expenditure.
The services of the company we used turned out to be indeed relatively expensive, but they organized the loading of belongings, disassembly of all furniture, transportation, unloading, and assembly of furniture within one working day. It was truly top-notch at the intersection of high art and truly innovative solutions. Exactly at 7:00 the process began and exactly at 16:00 it was completed. By the way, don't forget to feed the logistics company workers breakfast (Das Znüni) and lunch at your own expense. This is mandatory, such a service on your part is even separately specified in the contract.
How expensive is housing in Switzerland? In absolute figures, in the city of Bern, a normal monthly rent for a 3.5-room apartment ranges from 1,300 to 1,900 francs (approximately 1,300-1,900 US dollars) per month, plus a quarterly bill for water and electricity from the city, not including garbage disposal, internet connection, and other infrastructure costs. In absolute terms, this is a lot, but let's look at it in relative terms: it's about 30% of my income.
What you don't expect!
Moving into a new apartment in Switzerland, you should prepare for surprises. Properties here are equipped with three-phase sockets that do not match European, American, or Russian standards. You will have to buy a special adapter. Washing machines in houses are usually located in specially equipped utility basements, and you will have to share them with other residents. Washing machines are sometimes found in apartments, but less often.
The vast majority of apartments in Switzerland are rented unfurnished. Furnished apartments exist but are not common, and they are usually rented only for a limited period. Regardless of the apartment, the kitchen and bathroom will always be fully equipped, including a stove (usually ceramic glass, or electric in older apartments) and a dishwasher.
Very often, apartments have relatively small kitchens and relatively large built-in closets for mops, vacuum cleaners, and cleaning products. But the Swiss do not need the famous "kitchen conversations." For that, they have an unlimited number of forms of public and political life. However, they take home cleanliness very seriously. Hence the layout features.
Order in the house is most important
When signing a lease, the tenant usually receives, as an appendix, the officially recorded "House Rules" (Hausordnung) applicable to the building. This document, in particular, specifies the living conditions, primarily related to noise regulation. On the internet, one can often find a common cliché that in Switzerland "literally everything is prohibited" and even "after 10:00 PM, you cannot flush the toilet."
In reality, the "House Rules" specify both the time when noise is prohibited and the time when noise is allowed. For example, after 10:00 PM, you indeed cannot turn on the TV or stereo system at full volume, but you can play musical instruments twice a day—an hour before lunch and an hour after, but no later than 8:00 PM. On Sundays, for example, you cannot "beat carpets," but you can use a vacuum cleaner, also until 8:00 PM. As for the notorious "toilet water," such prohibitions do not exist in principle. However, what is indeed not allowed is "loudly filling the bathtub with water after 10:00 PM."
And what to do if your neighbor is a heavy smoker and his passion literally poisons your life? Since May 2010, smoking in Switzerland has been banned in all enclosed spaces that serve as public spaces or workplaces. Your own apartment does not fall into this category, and the tenant has the right to smoke at home, provided that he takes into account the presence of non-smoking neighbors and that upon moving to a new apartment, he may be required to pay a substantial compensation for repairs and remediation of smoke-impregnated premises. The thesis regarding "taking into account the presence of non-smoking neighbors" in practice in Switzerland is a carte blanche for smokers. Nothing can be done about it, and if the smoke becomes unbearable, the only solution is to move.
And finally, two more not always pleasant surprises: when signing a lease, the real estate company will require each future tenant to provide a certificate of no debts and will also offer to arrange a security deposit in a certified bank in the amount of one to three months' rent. There is no way around this under any circumstances. Of course, locking up several thousand francs in an account is annoying. But that's Switzerland—a true rule-of-law state!