Hello everyone.
I moved into my apartment on the 1st of September 2023 and now I just received a letter from the landlord about the first rent increase.
I just wanted to verify whether this is considered normal and justified since I received it right after it was decided that the apartment needed some small renovation to fix some issues.
As far as I know the change in the interest rate happened in December, was I just lucky that it was not increased earlier?
Attached you can find the letter.
You can check on the MV website, there’s a calculator.
It looks alright to me.
They used the right form etc.
Looks like it.
They can only raise it once a year so maybe that caused them to wait a little. Now the actual rate behind it was stable at 1.72% (as in: the rate printed 1.72% in two consecutive quarters) so if that’s the angle they were (not particularly likely) looking at it, it makes no sense to wait further.
On a positive note the rate has to go up quite a bit until it’s rounded up to 2% so I would except some stability for a bit.
I used the website mentioned by @nabalzbhf (https://mzr.mieterverband.ch/) and it looks everything is correct.
Thanks to the swift help from the both of you
When is the renewal date of the contract, and what is the termination period (KĂĽndingungfrist)?
If it’s the 1st of September and 3 months, you might have a case according to 269d. They need to send the rent increase notification at least 10 days before the start of the termination period.
Otherwise I agree the increase looks legit.
Finally, the last option is to contest the increase on the ground of excessive yield. That is, the increase itself is within the law, but the resulting rent could be deemed excessive.
This is a tricky one, because you cannot know their effective yield; but my understanding is that the majority of rentals are above the allowed threshold. Here Mieterverband or legal protection insurance would be key.
I’m in a similar situation myself and looking at whether it is worth pursuing.
Is the appartement less than 30 years old, if yes, you are quite guarantee to win on this ground.
how would this have more chances if the apartment is less than 30 years old? I would argue that older apartments are even more prone to have excessive yields as their value is lower than neighboring apartments, but they still keep up with the high rental prices of the neighborhood.
They use a different formula for >30y buildings.
So effectively can challenge any and all increases?
Seems unplausible to me.
Yes, if the building is less than 30 yo the max allowed return based on the bought price is
Reference interest rate + 2%
So currently, 1,75% + 2% = 3.75%
If you invoke the excessive return, yes. Almost all flats owned by funds have returns higher than the allowed rate.
Just have a look at some real estate fund like this one (https://www.baloise.ch/dam/baloise-asset-management-com/documents/de/immobilien/GB_Baloise-Swiss-Property-Fund_2023_de.pdf), go on page 27-31, you can easily see the bought price and the rents.
How can I know the year in which it was build? Do I have to ask my landlord or can I find this somewhere (public record or other relevant documents maybe?)
Do you have an ASLOCA association in your area ?
You could contact them and they could assess rapidly if the increase is legit or not.
You will have to pay the association subscription and certainly the hourly rate of the lawyer.
In my case, we settle before going to court and it costs a month of rent that could be cover by your personal insurance.
The federal buildings register should hold this information:
[DE]: GWR | Eidg. Gebäude- und Wohnungsregister
[FR]: RegBL | Registre fédéral des bâtiments et des logements
[IT]: REA | Registro federale degli edifici e delle abitazioni
You can search for your building using the federal geoportal: map.geo.admin.ch,
By clicking on the respective coloured dot, you can click on the “more info” link. It’ll give you info on the building, including the year of construction and the years when renovations have been made (provided they were subject to a building permit, since that’s in big part how they gather these informations). You can change the language in which informations are displayed by using the language tags on the top right of the screen (English gives specific informations in German).
Is it the building, or the flat itself that matters in case they are not the same? I would assume the latter?
There seems to be a misunderstanding.
For buildings newer than 10 years, the yield is calculated as a gross yield.
For buildings older than 10 years, the yield is calculated as a net yield.
The 30 year rule does not apply to the construction year, but tonthe holding period i.e. purchase date
