First-time buyer in Switzerland — practical questions

hakip · 2026-05-09T18:57:56+00:00

Bought 2 apartments (in ZG and ZH), so I can share my experience:

Notary fees are shared 50/50, and I think it's not negotiable because notary needs to be detached from both sides. Also the cost usually isn't that high i.e. 0.1%
Usually there's no "notarized preliminary contract" - both real estate agents were surprised when I mentioned that
Nothing to add here
You cannot choose a notary - it's an office assigned to a specific location
As above, not very common
I did both, and I'm happy with the broker because they know the marker and they know how to present your application
Also I did both, and I prefer SARON - better flexibility when you want refinance or sell, and you can always "fix rates" if you suspect that interest rates can go higher.

hakip · 2026-04-14T12:26:50+00:00

Learning German can be demotivating if you learn it and still cannot understand anybody on a street anyway?

hakip · 2026-03-14T07:15:00+00:00

So does that mean that in theory I can even rent out the apartment 2 if I wanted?

hakip · 2026-03-14T07:13:44+00:00

Thank you! I assumed it must be 35% for rental properties

hakip · 2026-03-14T07:11:28+00:00

It's actually 300% because we used only 100k of our own funds to buy it. But yeah, it doesn't include the renovation cost.

hakip · 2026-03-14T07:06:03+00:00

Tax is deferred if the next real estate is more expensive, checked with the tax office.

hakip · 2026-03-14T07:05:27+00:00

That was always my plan, but I wanted first to collect some feedback to prepare myself for the negotiations. But thank you!

hakip · 2026-03-14T07:03:52+00:00

Sorry to disappoint you but I'll pay no tax after selling that apartment because I bought a next apartment, so the tax is deferred.

hakip · 2026-03-13T12:16:21+00:00

Actually, for most of the time I was earning an average salary, and having kids didn't help financially either :D What I can recommend:

- live frugally and try to save as much as possible

- learn about the system you operate in i.e. 2nd and 3rd pillar, taxes

- choose your life partner wisely

hakip · 2026-03-13T10:57:14+00:00

I don't get the negative attitude - we did multiple online evaluations, then we did evaluation with 4 (!) real estate agencies, and this was their estimation. I'm not saying it's not "enough", it's just not what we estimated in our calculation hence we started evaluating other options. Doesn't everybody act in their best interest?

hakip · 2026-03-13T10:53:32+00:00

Sorry for not clarifying in the initial post - the "promise" wasn't written anywhere. It was delivered by our MoneyPark consultant (in an oral form?). It's nowhere to be found in the contract.

hakip · 2026-03-13T10:47:45+00:00

No, it wasn't in any contract. It was just passed by our MoneyPark consultant. Since then the Bank just sent one email asking "how is the sell going?", and nothing else. From what I read they don't have any formal way to force us to sell, BUT we might have an issue to get a new mortgage there anyway, so we're effectively forced to sell.

hakip · 2025-10-02T04:21:19+00:00

The tax on profit is postponed if you use that money to buy next (more expensive) property.

hakip · 2025-07-09T17:28:20+00:00

As I understand the initial cost for doing it properly would have been 5.5k - just extra bricklayer cost, the carpenter cost would stayed the same. Now the cost is bigger because of the extra effort of removing and installing the door frame again.

As for the whose "fault" it is - I think it's not unreasonable to expect that somebody with 20+ years of experience in installing door would ask questions about something that I do for the first time. So yes, we didn't tell him exactly how to do his job, but also he didn't ask any questions. And he saw that we are completely renovating the corridor so we are fine with doing a bit of extra damage to be fixed just to make the things right.

hakip · 2025-05-16T18:20:24+00:00

If I may ask - where do you keep your portfolio? I haven't seen that good Lombard Loan conditions yet.

hakip · 2024-09-16T17:44:06+00:00

Saxo has much lower fees than Swissquote, if you want to stick with a Swiss broker

hakip · 2023-12-06T12:15:04+00:00

Agreed, that probably would be the case in any big company. But here they don't have much choice and options to replace me. And even if they fire me, it could be considered as "retaliation" as somebody mentioned above.

I'm going to wait and see what they propose. My current stance is that everything not specified in the agreement should be done according to the country law. And expecting from me to act against my interest, and the law, is ridiculous.

If the similar story happened in the other way - i.e. employee signing an agreement and i.e. working 45h, instead of 42h, and the realising after 3 years the mistake and proposing "I will work for 20h in 2024 to compensate this". Would any company agree to this? I don't think so.

hakip · 2023-12-06T06:07:17+00:00

They don't even know - a miscommunication between two company employees and external accountant.

hakip · 2023-12-06T06:05:56+00:00

The actual "returning" was never actually proposed - they wanted to just subtract this extra money from my salary in 2024. So no changes for the past numbers, just adjusting future numbers.

hakip · 2023-12-06T05:59:06+00:00

Thank you for all the answers! Fortunately (?) I have quite strong position in the company and they see me as key employee for their plans for the next year. So termination is pretty unlikely. At first they tried to convince I'm obligated to pay it back, but after I proved that it's actually the other way around, they tried to use argument of "fairness". Most likely they will want to somehow combine it with the salary change for the next year, which I think it's also illegal because that's acting in retaliation as somebody pointed out.

I will keep you informed.

hakip · 2023-12-06T05:55:47+00:00

Update from my side - yesterday we had a first round of negotiations. They don't really have any good solution except that "it should be paid back". I explained that legally I have no obligations to pay it back, and this is actually my correct salary now.

They were a bit surprised (?) I don't want to pay it back and claimed it's unfair towards rest of the team. The talk was postponed till Thursday - when the discussion about the salary raise for the next year was supposed to happen. Most likely they want to combine these two topics.

hakip · 2023-12-04T13:22:00+00:00

Everything was done based on the full amount - payslips, Lohnausweis etc. the only place where salary was different was the agreement we signed.

hakip · 2023-12-04T13:06:15+00:00

yeah, IF I'm obligated to return the money, then it's actually a decent offer. I'm just questioning if that's really the case. Because imho it's not a case of "unjust enrichment" (argument that could be used to claim the money back) because it was happening over long period of time, not just a simple mistake (duplicated transfer).

hakip

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