Giving notice on your lease: deadline, form and date of receipt

Notice is a formal act. Sent too late, aimed at the wrong date, or signed by one person when it needed two, it has no effect at all: the lease runs on, and you pay for another term. Four points are enough to avoid that.

Notice period and term are two different things

The notice period is how much warning you have to give. For a dwelling it is three months. The term is the date on which the lease may end: it is set by the contract, by local custom, or failing that by law.

The two work together. Your notice must reach the landlord at least three months before a valid term, not three months before whatever date suits you. Notice arriving one day late does not disappear: it simply pushes the end to the next term, which may be months further off.

Customary terms are not the same everywhere in French-speaking Switzerland. Your lease almost always states them: it is the first document to open, before anything else.

The form the notice has to take

• In writing. A phone call, a text or an email to the agency is not notice.
• Signed by hand by every named tenant, without exception.
• Sent by registered post, so the date of receipt can be proved.
• Addressed to the landlord or the managing agency acting for them, at the address in the contract.

One point that often surprises people: when it is the landlord who gives notice, they must use an official form approved by the canton. That requirement falls on them, not on you. Your own notice needs no form, but it does need to be written and signed.

The family dwelling

If the apartment is the family home, a tenant who is married or in a registered partnership cannot give notice without the express consent of their spouse or partner. It makes no difference whose name is on the lease.

It is one of the most frequent causes of invalid notice, and it usually comes to light too late. Two signatures on the letter cost less than an extra term.

Receipt is what counts

It is neither the date you write at the top of the letter nor the postmark that governs. It is the moment the notice reaches the landlord. A registered letter posted on the last usable day but collected at the counter the following week can arrive out of time.

• Send several days before the deadline, not the night before.
• Keep the receipt and the tracking record.
• Registered post doubled with an ordinary letter costs two francs and heads off a lot of argument.

And if it is already too late

If you have missed the term, early return is still open to you: presenting a replacement tenant who meets the conditions of art. 264 CO releases you before the due date. That is exactly the subject of the first guide in this section.