There’s one experience that almost all of us who’ve lived here for a while share: the day you move out of your first Swiss flat. You’ve been preparing for weeks, you’ve cleaned more than you ever have in your life, and yet on the day of the handover you find yourself staring at the estate agent, looking as though you don’t quite understand what else they want.
In Switzerland, returning a flat means restoring it to the condition you found it in when you moved in. That doesn’t just mean ‘clean and tidy’. It means it must be verifiably clean. In the vast majority of tenancy agreements, the professional cleaning company carrying out the ‘grand nettoyage de sortie’ must provide documentation. The inspector arrives with a checklist and goes through the property room by room, drawer by drawer, and tile by tile. If there are marks on the wall where you hung a picture, the wall will need to be repainted. If the carpet is worn in high-traffic areas, this will be taken into account. If the bath has limescale that cannot be removed using standard methods, this will be deducted from the security deposit. This professional cleaning can cost between 500 and over 1,000 francs depending on the size of the flat, and in many cases it is not optional.
What few people realise when they move in is that the handover report – the one you sign on your first day in the flat – is the document that will determine everything you’ll be asked to pay for when you move out. If you’ve noted down every little fault that was already there when you arrived, you’re protected. If you signed it in a hurry without checking it because the removal van was waiting downstairs, you might be charged on the day you move out for damage that was already there when you arrived. And there’s another thing nobody explains to you in time: the notice period for giving up the flat is usually three months, with the move-out date falling at the end of a quarter. You can’t just leave whenever you like. It all sounds very nice in theory until that bill arrives – and it usually does.