Early termination: the essential rules

You have to leave before your lease ends: a transfer at work, a separation, a home found elsewhere. The question that follows is always the same: will you have to pay the rent until the next termination date? Not necessarily. Swiss law provides a way out, as long as you prepare it properly.

Handing back the apartment early

Early return is when tenants hand back the apartment without observing the notice period or the termination date set out in their lease. Normally that releases them from nothing: the contract still runs, and so does the rent.

Article 264 of the Code of Obligations opens a door. If you present your landlord with a new tenant who meets certain conditions, you are released from your obligations, even before the term. That is the mechanism everyone refers to, in everyday language, as a lease transfer.

The three conditions the candidate must meet

The law does not ask for a perfect candidate. It asks for one who ticks three boxes, and the three are cumulative.

1. 1They must be solvent, that is, able to bear the rent reasonably given their situation.
2. 2The landlord must not be able to refuse them reasonably: a refusal has to rest on an objective ground, not on a preference.
3. 3They must be willing to take the apartment on the conditions of the current lease: same rent, same duration, same clauses.

That third condition is the one most often forgotten. A candidate who accepts the apartment but wants to renegotiate the rent, obtain works or push the move-in date back by three months does not meet the same-conditions requirement.

A real candidate, not an intention

Telling your managing agency that you are looking for a successor is not enough. What counts is presenting someone: an identified person, with a complete application, a move-in date and a clear willingness to sign.

That is also why the date you send it matters. As long as the application has not gone out, the candidate has not been presented, and the rent keeps running.

If no valid candidate is presented

In that case you remain liable for the rent until the lease expires or until the next contractual or statutory termination date. That is the default rule, and it applies even if you have already handed back the keys.

The landlord must nonetheless deduct what the early release gains them: the expenses they were able to save, and what they obtained from another use of the apartment, or what they intentionally chose to forgo. In other words, if they re-let the apartment the following month, they cannot claim that same month from you.

Handing back the keys counts as much as the candidate

The mechanism rests on the apartment actually being returned. Keeping the keys “just in case”, leaving furniture behind or still using the place now and then weakens the whole approach.

In practice: empty it, clean it, do the check-out inspection and hand over the keys on the agreed date. A documented handover is worth more than an informal one.

“Lease transfer” does not mean transferring the contract

This is the most widespread confusion. In the vast majority of cases, what is called a lease transfer does not hand your contract over to the successor: the landlord terminates yours and signs a new contract with them. Two successive contracts, not one contract changing hands.

The difference is not theoretical. It explains why the landlord keeps control over the choice of the new tenant, and why your release depends on them not being able to refuse your candidate reasonably, not on a right to impose that candidate on them.