If you wish to offer housing, you will find hereby several useful information regarding the steps to undertake in order to do so.
There are 2 ways of posting your housing offer:
- UNIL-EPFL housing portal: You only need to create an account for free and to follow the steps to publish your ad. These offers will be accessible to all UNIL and EPFL students and PhD students.
- EPFL intranet (only in French) which access is strictly reserved to EPFL secretaries. You can email us your ad and we will take care of its publication for you. The ads on this platform are mainly dedicated to professors, academic guests, and post-docs with higher budgets than those of the students.
EPFL declines all responsibility on the outcome of discussions with potential tenants.
Conditions for the publication of ads:
Because posting an announcement on our database is open to everyone, we are obliged to refuse to post announcements that state or imply the following:
- Preference for students of a certain race, nationality or religion (or a refusal to offer housing to students of certain races, nationalities, or religions).
- Rent that is considerably higher than current housing market prices.
- Announcements that are biased or with sexual connotations.
- Housing offers not allowing the students to enjoy a totally private area to sleep and work.
In addition, the following conditions must be met:
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- Closed room/suite with a window
- Access to kitchen and bathroom
Recommended rents:
Students and researchers mainly come from foreign countries and often do not have the same financial means that people who are living in Switzerland may have.
Here are the rents that we recommend for:
- A furnished room: CHF 750.- /month (internet and utilities included)
- A furnished studio: CHF 900.-/month (internet and utilities included)
The role of our portal is only to communicate your offer. We do not step in to the rental of the offered housings. Any further contact is directly between you and the prospective tenants.
- It is important to keep your ad up to date and to stop the publication as soon as you have found a tenant.
- It is important to respond rapidly to e-mail requests, especially if you are not reachable by phone, and even if your home is already rented.
- Some students come for one semester and therefore seek an accommodation for six months only. It is very useful for them to be able to beneficiate from offers corresponding to the duration of their stay at EPFL.
The time of year will determine the number of requests you will receive.
It is important to have personal contact with potential tenants in order to know who you are dealing with.
The majority of people coming to EPFL are from abroad and will contact you from their country, mainly in English. They are not necessarily on site and cannot always travel to visit your home. So a contact by Skype video can be a great help for those people coming from far away.
Once you have had a suitable contact with a specific person, go ahead and discuss in more detail the terms of the lease.
In September, it often happens that a lot of students do not know before mid-July whether they are admitted at EPFL or not. In this case, we advise you to clearly discuss the conditions of booking and the cancellation policies of your accommodation.
We advise everyone to sign a written lease agreement to formalize the terms of the lease. The important points to mention are:
- Beginning and end dates of the lease
- Renewal or non-renewal terms of the contract
- Monthly rent with or without utilities
- Specify what the utilities are
- All related costs to be paid by the student
- Rental guarantee requested specifying that it will be refunded at the departure of the tenant if all rents were paid and no damage was found in the housing
- Any special clause of the use of the accommodation (Ex: include a house rule)
- If you are not the owner of the housing you are offering, please note that you will need your owner/real estate agency’s agreement in order to sub-lease whole or part of your housing (a room for instance).
- A landlord has legal obligations to the tenant. Thank you to check with the Chambre Vaudoise Immobilière (owners association) to obtain the required official documents to be transferred to a tenant at the start of the rental.
If necessary, we offer sub-leases examples for a furnished room or studio in your apartment/house.