Property purchase costs | Zurich canton

Am i right to assume following costs:

  1. notary fee (0.1% of property value)
  2. Land registry fee (0.25% of property value)

I understand transfer tax is not longer levied in Zurich. Capital tax gain sits with the property but seller should pay it.

Am I missing anything ?

@thepoorswiss writes here that a total of 5% of fees is to be expected.

I have no practical experience in the matter.

I would definitely plan for more than this.

Notaries can charge significantly more than 0.1% depending on them.

If you have no transfer tax (droits de mutation?) in Zurich, you are going to save a lot of money indeed.

At the very least, I would account for 1% of the house value ready to go in cash. But in most cantons, I would recommend 5%. In our case, we ended up around 4% in the end.

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I just purchased a property in the Canton of Zurich and the fees were 0.2%

0.1% for the notary and 0.1% for the land registry. We covered all the fees on our end as it was a transaction within the family, but often the fees are split between the parties. In Zurich notaries are controlled by the government and fees are standardized.

We also paid 0.05% for a new provision we entered into the land registry and 0.2% of the mortgage value for the creation and entry (0.1% each) of the debt certificate.

Source of these numbers is the invoice I paid yesterday.

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Thank you Marcus!

When did you pay these fees?

For the notary meeting or after?
Same for land registry. Are these due for the notary, after or at completion (could be many months later)? Thank you

I received the bill with all costs directly from the Notary (the land registry is handled by them; Notariat & Grundbuchamt) the day after signing, payable within 30 days.

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That matches my experience, paid 0.1% to the notariat.

Now looking to pay 9% taxes (plus notary fees) to buy something in Italy


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Writing this for posterity as I stumbled on this post while researching this question but for other cantons.

What I learned is that real estate purchase fees really depend from the canton to canton. ZH is the cheapest, and FR is the most expensive (source). Note that the source does not include all possible fees, e.g. that the Grundpfandvertrag fee is missing (it’s a fee that you pay when you register a mortgage amount in the Grundbuch). You can look it up in Kantonale Notariatstarife.

This is correct. Like many things in Switzerland it varies from canton to canton and the differences can be huge. Luckily, I only bought in the 2 cheapest cantons! :slight_smile:

Any experience in kanton Zug?

check out the link here: https://deinnotar.ch/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Handelszeitung_16.1.2019_Gebühren_Hauskäufer-in-der-Gebührenfalle.pdf

it seems like ZG might have a flat fee structure.

Thank you.
This is more and less what I understood from the link above. Anyway I will discover it in the next months

Purchased a property in Stadt Zurich last year and couldn’t believe how cheap the fees were. Definitely something to consider in the overall purchase price. Yes you may save some money buying further out but you could be paying 5%+ more just due to the transfer/notary fees.

When you sell a property you need to pay taxes on the capital gain but this can be offset if you buy another property.
Do you know if this only applies for the sell and buy in different kantons?