Usual story... work in Opfikon currently in Oerlikon. So far like Seefeld and Wipkingen, but have yet to decide.

We are ideally looking for a 4 bedroom/2 bathroom (what is that a 5 room?) apartment from October 2007 for a longer term family home.

When should we start looking?
or anyone know of anything?

hi,
first of all you have to give notice 3 months before leaving your current appartment ,so that means in end of june.so i think that you have to have a contract for a new appartment before that you give the notice,that is very important.so you should start looking!

It will be a 5 1/2 room apartment.

Depend on your notice situation of the old flat. I guess you have to give notice till 30th of June means the new apartment should be available from 1st of Oct.
Good luck

http://www.homegate.ch
Is a good place to start looking.

Giving notice on a old apartment depends on the contract most say you can give notice only certain times of the year end of March,June and Sep not sure about Dec, another point from my experience if you are less than 1 year in a property then they get a bit picky about the final cleaning.

DC

Reading posts on the forum it seems to take most people around 3 or 4 months to find somewhere and taking into account time to finalise the contract I'd say start looking now or next month at the latest. At least start looking to get an idea of what's available.

I would suggest you start looking ASAP!!! I got married about a month ago and two months prior to being married we decided to start looking for a place and guess what, we still living separately only due to not being able to find something. We've been to see more than 20 appartments and applied for 12 of that only 4 got back to us saying we didn't get the place. IT's a NIGHTMARE!!! and when we enquired what the reason was for being turned down (he is German and I'm South African) we got stuff like, too young, no students (he's doing his Phd), it's a family orientated building or the best was "we thought you were Swiss!!!!!!"

Anyway good luck and like I said start looking NOW!

C

Hi,

We spent a month before getting a place - but our criteria were much less demanding too Having said that, had to apply for atleast 8-9 places- we managed to get 3!!

However, definitely have a look at homegate ASAP because I've seen quite a few homes come up for rent in Seefeld over the last one week. You can subscribe to e-mails according to your search criteria (location, budget, furnished/unfurnished) etc. - comes in handy - you dont need to go through miles of listings each time then!

All the best for your search