I am not sure if this could be of any use.
Since my wife works in a housing agency in Bern and things do not work everywhere the same I still thought maybe this could be of some help.
- If the previous tenants gave their notice at the required notice date.
The renting agency can modify the rent to an extent. (there are rules but they are many items which can lead to a rent increase)
- If the previous tenant did not give there notice at the required date the contract would be a continuation of their contract which would be no rent increase legally of course if you sign the contract you have accepted the terms.
Notice dates in Bern are only possible 2 or 3 times a year.
Hope this helps
mb90197

20% increase is not important. Important is if the lease price is reasonable for what will be offered. If that is the case and you immediately start a case, it is like a war declaration to the owner. Only start something like that when you are certain that the price is too high for the state, amount of rooms, square meters and location of the apartment.

Really well said. I totally agree.

I think that you're not necessarily building a good landlord-tenant relationship by going into a contract (that you previously thought fine enough to apply for) contesting the price. And to reiterate, you really don't know the landlord's history for pricing the flat, so you can't assume it's not a fair increase.

It's all so odd that people would go and look at a flat they thought was too expensive in the first place. It's probably the only reason it's offered to a foreigner and available is it's not a huge bargain.

I wonder if the landlord has the option to just end the contract in 30 days, it would seem totally justified.

This situation has now been dealt with so I thought I would post an update, especially in light of some of the discouraging replies to my original post. Hopefully the information will prove useful to other forum members.

We signed the lease for the apartment, and then formally contested the rent ("loyer initial") due to the ridiculous increase between us and the previous tenants. Contrary to what some people posted earlier, we and all other tenants in Switzerland have every right to do this within 30 days of taking possession of the apartment. I would even argue that we have a responsibility to do so. Landlords and the régies are profiting from the pénurie to increase rents in leaps and bounds, whereas rents are tied to mortgage rates and shouldn't be increasing at all right now. Any renter who doesn't contest an abusive and/or unjustified increase is only adding to the problem. Sadly, most don't.

We recently had a hearing at the Commission de Conciliation, and the initial increase was reduced by more than half. We might have been able to have it reduced further, but we weren't sure how far the landlord was willing to go with it (he's an executive at a big company and has more money and tools at his disposal than us), so we wanted it dealt with immediately. We also didn't want to make the landlord too angry since in the past he has managed to evict tenants he didn't like. We are pleased with the decrease in our rent.

We were assisted by ASLOCA and were not happy with their "help". I'm not sure if I would recommend them -- while the ASLOCA guy didn't really have anything to offer at the Commission, I feel that the régie might have been much more aggressive had we been on our own, so his simple presence might have made a difference.

Feel free to message me if you are considering contesting an increase and want some advice.