Apartment Hunting [Part 3]

The agent was headed out on vacation for a few weeks. His daughter helps him with the business (when not looking after her family), and we arranged to meet in the lobby of my office to go over the contract, which was all in German.

The contract came in a large envelope with several documents inside. They all needed explaining.

* * * * *

She described the nuances of renting in Switzerland: How there're 4 defined moving dates in pretty much the entire country, every three months, and many don't accept the dead of winter either. So the fact that most of the apartments became available at the first of July was not a mere coincidence. It also meant that I'll need to figure out my long term plans well in advance, but that I could reasonably expect not to be given shorter than 3 months notice of eviction.

There are rules on noise (the usual quiet-time we're familiar with in the 'States from the late evening to the early morning, in addition to the lunch hour from noon to 1 pm, which is when parents of small children set them down for naps.)

There are rules for the garbage, which is collected weekly. The costs of this collection are paid for by a stamp system which has you buying stickers at the grocery store and affixing them to the outside of trash bags. I'm tempted to ask what happens to bags of trash left outside which don't have any stamps on them, but I expect to be told something along the lines of: "I'm not sure. It's never happened before."

There are rules on upkeep. Repairs costing below a certain amount are expected to be handled by the tenant. Everything else is to be brought to the attention of management as soon as possible. Nailing a bunch of things to the walls is totally acceptable, as long at the holes are patched upon moving out. In fact, the general principle seems to be: as long as the place remains in roughly the same condition as it was on the day you moved in, you'll be okay. "Make sure anything broken you don't want to be blamed for later is noted on the papers you sign when you move in!" she says almost ominously, then adds "...but my dad or I will be there then to help." I'm not sure how much the company is paying for the relocation service, but in my case it seems to be worth every penny.

There are rules preventing children under the age of 10 from riding in the elevator unattended. "Oops. This must be the place," I though to myself.

The rent has two parts; there's a basic cost of the room, and an additional price for utilities. It seems that at the end of the year, management determines how much they actually paid in heating and electricity costs, and makes any payment adjustments as needed. People aren't given their own electricity meter, apparently, but everything is averaged out across the entire building. While this doesn't exactly seem fair, the majority of your walls are shared with your neighbors anyway, so environmental costs are always coupled with those in the same building, even in the 'States.


We went over everything in the envelope very quickly. A few points needed to be clarified, and she said she'd follow up on them. I signed several papers, and she tucked them into a folder, to mail later. We shook hands and I walked back into the office. "It's done," I told my co-workers as I reached my desk, "I just signed the papers."

"Confetti!" exclaimed one, throwing her hands upward. They were all happy for me. I was happy too, though I had a peculiar knot in my stomach while thinking maybe I'd made a mistake for not waiting longer to see what other responses came back. The next day I received an email from a second apartment. I copied the German text to Google's online translator and read:

"Ladies and gentlemen
You have applied to us for the 2-room apartment on the Palm highway 6. Unfortunately, we have to give you in this case, a rejection. On her apartment search, we wish you every success.
For questions please contact us
Best regards"

Within the week, I received another rejection. While it strangely stung, I have to say it validated my decision to accept what was offered, and I am looking forward to the eventual move.

Inside the envelope that the contract came in, there was also a stack of papers I'd vaguely remembered seeing the last time I was here. They were intended to provide payment, and the closest thing back home to which I can describe them being like is a pre-filled postal money order. That is, usually when you're asked to send a money order, you can go to the post office and pay some money to obtain one. ...it's a blank one in terms of who can cash it, until you fill that part in, but the money order has value from the time you get it, since you paid for it (and the value of it) at the time you got it. In Switzerland, the post office actually doubles as a financial institution. (Many people have their ordinary banking accounts there.) So when somebody wants payment, they can send these un-validated payment slips to you. All the information about where the money needs to go is already on the slips. Not just a name or organization, but an account and routing number for the payment to ultimately be delivered to. Taking this slip to the post office along with a stack of cash, the slip will be stamped (giving it value), a portion will be torn off as a receipt for you, and the rest will be used to make sure the money gets to the right place. Is this possible in the US? If so, does anybody actually do this? The whole thing felt convoluted to me.

At any rate, all payment slips needed for the rest of the year were included, along with a separate one for the damage deposit, which was 3 months' rent, a value that seemed high even to the agent. The deposit was to be held in a 'neutral' bank account, so that neither of us would be able to retrieve it without some paperwork. While I'd heard of an escrow before, I'd never seen it applied to renting.

A deposit of 3 months' rent, in addition to my first month would be close to CHF 5000 [$5800]. Sure, I could come up with that from savings in the bank back home, but it wasn't exactly like I had it sitting around in my pocket. I also needed to cover the cost of the current apartment, the stay in which I needed to extend until the permanent one became available, longer than my company would pay for. So there's a need for something like $7000 at the time, and it turns out that the Swiss like to pay monthly. I'd been working almost three weeks by then, and it would be another two before the first paycheck showed up. Of course, to get my hands on that, or to wire what else was needed from back home, I needed:  ...a Swiss bank account.