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| My search is about a year old, perfectly within the normal range.... | |
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Yes, that is a reasonable time. You seem to be doing thorough research, looking at a lot of areas, and viewing the sites at different times of day, and you know not to believe everything that a seller or agent says. All of that is good.
In principle, the kinds of investigation you seem to have in mind are
good ideas for a potential buyer: view the property a second or third time, bring in a master builder or other kind of inspector/consultant for them to professionally assess the property and its possible defects and to draw up a list of work that would need to be done and a budget for that.
The quirky thing about the property market in Switzerland, though, is that
there are many more buyers willing and able to buy than there are sellers waiting to sell. The sellers already know, before they put their property on the market, that unless there is something dramatically wrong with the property, they can count on the whole process being a done deal within a matter of a few days or weeks, at the most.
This means that the sellers really do not need to bother waiting for any buyer who would prefer to go away and think about whether or not they're interested, nor does the seller need to give them the opportunity to bring anyone else along, later. The seller can choose, and will. And the agent, wanting to make their commission swiftly, will guide the seller to choosing the buyer who will make the least fuss and get the finances sorted immediately.
This makes it quite hard for those buyers new to buying, at all, or to buying in Switzerland, to learn the ropes. A lot will have to be self-taught. Read, read, read and learn from YouTube.
Make two checklists:
- The key most costly things that could be wrong with any property, and how to identify whether or not they are defective, and what they would (in a rather generous ball-park) cost to repair, renovate or replace.
- The key things you'd like to have and can be done by you yourself or by a contractor, within the budget you have set aside for this.
Those checklists will help you to come to terms with which kinds of compromises you could more or less easily make, and which factors are a no-go, for you personally.
Then view, view, view lots of properties, including some which you think may be better or worse than what you're hoping to buy. When you are there, look, listen and smell. Take photographs, if you are allowed to. Go home and analyse those.
Get all your documentation in a row and make sure you can prove your financial position immediately.
In general, in Switzerland, you'll probably have to accept that you'll need to decide swifty, scary as that sounds, because other buyers will be there, and swift. Therefore, once you've done your research from the outside, if ever you think you might have found
one you'd really like to buy, you might then consider paying a more experienced person to come along with you to the viewing. That's not going to be cheap, but if you lack the knowledge to assess the building yourself, it could save you from a wrong decision And watching every move the inspector makes during the viewing can teach you a lot. Ask the inspector to speak out loud so you can record all the observations.
As long as you can get your head around this rapid deal-making, having a look around can be a fun and educational journey, especially since you're not, it seems, under any time constraints.
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