First of all, it is important to mention that the apartments in Switzerland are mananged almost exclusively from real estate agencies (gérances). Therefore, all the procedures are made directly with the gérances and rarely you will happen to meet with the owner.
The Do’s and Don’t’s when searching for housing through a real estate agency (source):
- The real estate agencies in Switzerland are not working with the same logic as in Greece. That means that you will not go to an agency and say you are interested in an apartment with some characteristics. In no way, an agency -especially during high demand periods, like when plenty of new students arrive- will offer you an apartment like that, especially to non-Swiss.
- If you answer to an ad you saw on the Internet for an apartment, do not go to visit it without first discussing the lease details with the agency (e.g if they rent to foreign students, if it is necessary to have a Swiss guarantor, if you can share the flat with other people, etc).
- If you are fine with the lease details, go to visit the apartment the sooner possible and if you are interested in it, fill in the lease form you’ll receive from the agent during the visit. Besides the lease form, you have to deliver to the agent a dossier with the documents described in a following section.
- Waiting for the answer from the agency, it is good to contact them regularly to ask for the progress in the selection process.
- Be ready to give the obligatory deposit (3 months of rent).
- Prepare the contract for the household insurance and the personal liability insurance.
Necessary Documents:
The dossier you have to deliver to the real state agency who manages the apartment have to include the following documents:
- Permit of Residence. If you have applied for a permit but you have not received it yet, us the certificate of residence “Attestation de Résidence”, instead. You can receive this certificated from the same commune where you applied for the permit.
- Your work contract for the phd or post-Doc students or the enrolment certificate for the master or bachelor students (for epfl: you can print the enrolment certificate directly from the is-academia).
- Certificate that you do not have debts and you are not wanted by the police. Even if you are just arrived in Switzerland you need this certificate while searching for housing. It’s called “Poursuite et faillites”, costs around 17CHF and you can receive it from an Office des poursuites, depending on the region you are staying. You can find the corresponding Office of your area from here.
- For the phd, certificate (attestation) that proves the duration of your studies. You can receive it from the secretary of your laboratory. For the master and bachelor there is not such a certificate. You can optionally print the description of your program of studies mentioning its duration.
- For the master and bachelor it is obligatory to have a guarantor, because you do not get paid in Switzerland and the agency needs to know there is someone to cover your expenses. That’s why you need to bring from Greece also the following documents: translated documents from the bank that mention the balance of your parent’s account for at least the past 3 months and copies of your parent’s IDs.
Unfortunately, there are several agencies (e.g Foncia) that do not accept as a guarantor non Swiss residents (for example your parents). In that case you need to find someone who is working in Switzerland and have in your dossier: copy of his ID, copy of the 3 most recent salary statements of his (or copy of tax statement if he is self-employed), and a certificate of your guarantor, dated and signed (letter confirming that the person you know in Switzerland agrees to be your guarantor)
Searching Process:
Two very useful sites with many different housing offers as well as guidelines are: the housing site of EPFL and the one of UNIL.
For searching through real estate agencies, you can find at this site a list with all the sites of the agencies, from where you can be informed about any new apartments.
Despite the official agencies sites, you can also use advertising sites where you can find gathered the ads from all the agencies. Such sites are: immostreet, homegate, and comparis. These sites offer the choise of subscribing, in order to receive with email every day the new adds that are matching your search criteria. You can choose f.e the maximum or minimum rent, the square meters or the number of rooms.
Another good choice with plenty of ads for housing is the anibis. In this site you can also find a lot of ads for flatsharing.
For those who are already registered at EPFL or UNIL (they have a gaspar account), there is a database with a lot of ads for apartments or for rooms in flatshares.
For those who are future students and they aren’t yet registered to EPFL or UNIL, you can receive the ads that are posted in the database in PDF form if you send an email to [email protected] mentioning the following information:
- Name and Family name
- Date of Birth
- Starting Date of your studies
- If you are a Bachelor, Master, exchange or PhD student
You can find additional information to the official site of Lausanne and to the office of tourism of Lausanne.
Another site that has some ads for housing, mostly for flatsharing, is the students.ch. However, this one is not updated that often.
Finally, the last years, there are also some facebook groups with many ads for housing, mostly for flathshare or for subletting. For example this group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/330486193693264/.
Advice:
When you are searching for housing, it is good to always have with you many copies of the above mentioned necessary documents. The housing offers are very few, so timing is very essential. The moment you visit an apartment that is nice, even if it’s not you dreamhouse, apply to the agency the soonest possible.
While searching for a place to live, a very useful tool is the http://map.search.ch/, where apart from the map, you can also find the bus stops and the metro stops. In the http://www.sbb.ch/en/ you can find complete directions about which public transports to use and how much time you need to reach the apartment you want to visit, simply by adding the departure and arriving points. For more accurate schedules for the public transport you can use the site of Lausanne’s public transports and the one for the area of Morges.
As mentioned above, the whole searching process becomes easier if you have a local guarantor to sign the contract with you. The guarantor ensures the agency that in case you abandon your studies and leave Switzerland, he will pay the rest of the rent for you.
A very good option is to find someone that ends his lease earlier than it’s stated on his contract and has to suggest a new tenant to continue his contract. In more details, when a tenant wants to leave his apartment, he has to inform the agency at least 4 months earlier. In case he needs to leave earlier than 4 months, he is obliged to find and suggest at least one person, that wants the apartment. Depending on the agency and on the dossier of the candidates, there is a great possibility that the old tenant’s suggestion is taken into account. So… keep your eyes open!
It’s also good to know that the agencies do not rent apartments easily to someone who did not go to visit first the apartment. Thus, it’s better to seach for housing while being already in Lausanne and not from Greece. Finally, you need to know that the houses change tenant every 1rst or 15en of the month, so it might be necessary to pay the whole month or to stay in a hotel, a hostel or a camping for a few days.
When finally you find an apartment, you need to pay the legal deposit as soon as you sign the contracts (equal to 3 months of rent). You will receive back the whole deposit when you’ll leave the apartment, in case you left the apartment intact. If you do not have this amount of money for the deposit, there are some companies like the SwissCaution that with a yearly subscription can pay the deposit for you. However, whatever damage you make to the apartment will be charged to you.
Alternative Solutions for Housing:
For those you might be interested, a very good and cheaper solution is flatsharing (colocation). There are plenty of sites for flatshares, for example at the database of EPFL-UNIL, at the students.ch, at the anibis.ch as well as ads posted at the walls of the university campus. You can always ask some of your friends living here, if you have any. A good site specialized to flatshare is the http://www.easywg.ch/.
Another good option that you should keep in mind is the subletting (sous-location). In most of the cases, it lasts a few weeks or a few months and is an excellent case, since it offers you housing for a short period of time, while searching without stress a nice apartment.
To Sum Up:
You should search early in the morning daily all the aforementioned sites for new ads.
Do not neglect to look at the university campus for ads posted on the walls, especially if you are interested for a flatshare.
As soon as you find an ad that seems interesting, call directly to make an appoitment for a visit. The number at the ad can be, depending on the occasion, of the current tenant (locataire) who is leaving the apartment,of the house manager (concierge) or of the real estate agency (gerance). Unfortunately, it’s not highly probable that the house manager and the estate agent speak english well, so it’s good to learn some basic words for making appoitments in frech or ask a french speaking friend to call them on your behalf.
If you like the apartment after the visit, apply at the agency the soonest possible. A few days later (10-15 depending the agency), they will call you to inform you about their choise, but usually only if their answer is positive. However, we advice you to call them in the meantime to try to persuade them. While you are waiting for their answer, do not stop searching to other ads or applying to other apartments!
Finally, we strongly recommend to subscribe at AEGEL’s mailing list, since often people from our community post ads for flatshare or in order to find someone to suggest to their agency when they are leaving their apartment.
Good luck in the search process and keep calm…