What does a lease transfer cost?

The question comes up quickly, and the answer is rarely written down anywhere. The Code of Obligations organises early return without saying a word about its price. That gap let customs take hold, some of which stand up and some of which do not.

The law sets no price

Article 264 CO describes a mechanism: present a candidate who is solvent, acceptable and ready to take the apartment on the conditions of the current lease. It does not make your release conditional on any payment. Looking for a successor costs nothing in itself.

What an agency charges

A tenant who hands the search to a letting agency is paying for a service, and the custom in French-speaking Switzerland settled at around a month's rent. That invoice pays for real work: the listing, its distribution, the calls, the viewings, the checking of applications.

What is less often noticed is that the same letting is frequently billed twice: to the tenant leaving, and to the candidate who hired that same agency to find them a home.

Buying the furniture

Between the outgoing tenant and the successor, selling a fitted kitchen, light fittings or furniture is perfectly lawful. It is an ordinary contract of sale, separate from the lease.

• The price is freely agreed between the two, and the landlord is not a party to it.
• Draw up a written, signed list of what is being taken over, with a price for each item.
• A figure unrelated to what the goods are actually worth is no longer a sale: it is a disguised condition attached to getting the apartment.

What cannot be charged

A candidate successor does not have to pay to get the lease. Handling fees demanded from a candidate, key money, or a sum required in exchange for being presented to the managing agency fall outside what the law organises.

If such a demand is made of you, ask for the details in writing. A legitimate service can be explained and invoiced; a disguised condition cannot.

How we work

To remove any ambiguity in this guide: at Vends ton bail, finding the successor is free for the outgoing tenant, and a bonus is paid to them if one of our candidates signs. That is the opposite of the custom described above, and it is the only point in this article that concerns us.