We bought an apartment in Lucerne 2 years ago, we bought it on the basis that the nebenkosten would be around 300chf per month, we have now gone from 300chf to 450cf to 850chf and now we just received another bill for 1200chf. We have been to the HEV, lawyers etc. and no-one seems to be able to hlep us. We wish we had never bought this place and cant even sell it with these costs attached to it. Can anyone reccommend an englsih speaking lawyer who specialises in property purchasing in CH that could possibly help us? We feel we were mislead into buying this apartment and want to get it sorted out asap.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Many thanks
Sam

There has to be an explanation for the increases and a justification for the bill of CHF 1200.
Surely residents cannot be expected to find that kind of money suddenly?

Any Nebenkosten charges should be itemised.

What unreasonable or unnecessary charges are being applied?

Do you have meetings with the appartment owners? What do they say?

I believe these normally happen at least once a year and are chaired by the Verwaltung.

Does the breakdown of costs make sense (you do have a breakdown of costs, I presume?)

Which of these costs are increasing so much?

Our costs went up slightly due to the Verwaltung giving themselves a pay-rise but also, to ensure there wasn't a deficit in the repairs fund.

We're in a similar (though not so extreme situation). When we bought our appt, the monthly charges were quoted at 380.- per month, but we hear now they are going to be 490.-. When the appts were built and the 1st owners moved in 3 years ago, their charges were 280.-. We have actually requested an extraordinary meeting with the Gerancier (Verwaltung) to discuss this and other issues (security, maintenance etc) for next week.

You realise you are quite entitled to change your Verwaltung, if you believe they are not doing a fair and reasonable job, don't you?

About your charges, you should receive a yearly breakdown, including justifications for any increases.

I did have a good contact but cannot find it at the moment. We have several other friends who have bought here and experienced similar problems post purchase, including never ending bills coming from lawyers/notaries.

Wish you luck sorting it out.

The Nebenkosten are decided and approved by the condominium owners association. Neither the architect nor the builder is responsible.

Sounds like you need to talk to the other people in the association, I am sure there must be a chairman or equivilant. Should not be too hard then to get to the bottom of these charges, maybe it is increased as a one off for some major works or something.

Talk about one offs.
I recently received a bill for CHF 4,800 for the contribution to the modernistaion of the sewage system of the village.
The ironic thing is that I actually have a sceptic tank which I have pumped out by a firm.
So I obviously queried this as I found out 50% of the rest of the house in the village did (though 90% were actually connected to the sewage)
The Comune informed us that under Section bla bla bla of the we have the Right To Rip You Off Act. that they can enforce payment under Federal Law of those monies and have the powers to put a loan on your property and take the monies if you don't have the monies or are refusing to pay and you have no say.
Basically I had no option to pay the CHF 4,800 and I don't even use the facilities.
I would love to see how your standard UK family would react to receiving a bill like that and ceratinly few would have the ready funds to pay from what I can see.

If this is a "normal sized appartment 2.5-4.5 rooms the costs are way too high. However, as previously stated in this thread, they need to be itemised so it should be easy to see if you are being ripped off. I also recommend *talking* to your neighbours, which I hope you have already done. You should all be paying the same amount adjusted for size on most items. Some items get charged per unit not per sqm (A lift may be one of these at a guess), but the Wirtschaftsplan and Abrechnung need to detail how these are charged.
My feeling is either
i) You are being ripped off.
or
ii) You don't understand the costs or have not explained them fully to us. for example if there have been any Sonderumlage (one off bills) to account for work that has been done on the flat.

I also hope you attend an Eigentuemervesammlung (owners meeting) where you can raise issues like this.

I understand your frustration and if (i) is the case above you need to speak to a lawyer. Good luck in sorting this out!

Or, as a percentage. A ground floor flat may not have to pay for their share of lift servicing, for example.

You need to check these percentages as well as they may not have been fairly apportioned.

You definitely need professional legal advice. Here is a place to start: http://www.swisslawyers.com/en/00_ho...ltsverband.htm.

Good luck in resolving the problems with the Nebenkosten.

this is the kind of crap that makes people buy instead of rent and damn the inflexibility.

Phil, he did buy.

eh? this is all about someone who bought

Erm, read the OP again, they did buy.

Ehm, no, the OP bought the apartement

this is the kind of crap that makes people buy a single detached house rather than an appartment....and damn the inflexibility.

Or for those who cannot afford a single detached house, this is the kind of crap that makes people rent because then at least they can't raise the price disproportionately.

OP should have been invited to the meeting of the owners' association where the contribution increase was decided.