Rent · Switzerland

Should your rent fall with the reference rate?

When the mortgage reference rate falls, a rent set on a higher rate can be cut. Enter your net rent and when it was last set: the check uses the Federal Office for Housing’s official rate and the Federal Statistical Office’s consumer price index. Nothing you enter leaves your browser.

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Without service charges (Nebenkosten), as in your contract.

CHF
When was your rent last set?

The start of your contract or your last rent increase. A cut the landlord made does not count.

Your contract or last rent notice states it.

The landlord claims general cost increases

Landlords may set off higher maintenance and running costs, but under Federal Supreme Court case law they must prove them; a flat percentage is disputed. Enter one only if your landlord states it.

How to claim

  1. Write to your landlord. The cut takes effect on the next date you could give notice, so your letter must arrive before your notice period starts: for a cut from 1 July with three months’ notice, by the end of March. Send it by registered mail.
  2. The landlord has 30 days to answer, and may set off inflation and proven cost increases.
  3. If you disagree with the answer, you can take the request to your district’s conciliation authority within 30 days of receiving it; if the landlord does not answer, within 60 days of sending your letter. The procedure is free.

The reference rate does not apply to index-linked or graduated rents, to subsidised or cooperative flats, or to rents fixed for five years or more. If your contract or last rent notice states a reservation (“Vorbehalt”), or you are unsure, ask your cantonal tenants’ association. This check is information, not legal advice.

Reference rate and publication dates: Federal Office for Housing (BWO), read every working day. Pass-through rates: −2.91% per quarter point (BWO; VMWG Art. 13), several steps from the table of the Hauseigentümerverband (HEV Schweiz), the same figures as the tenants’ association. Inflation: national consumer price index (BFS LIK), of which the landlord may set off 40% (VMWG Art. 16). We add the percentages together; multiplying them instead changes the result by about a hundredth of a point.