Hello, All.
I was woking in EPFL , Lausanne for 4 years as a phD student.
After my graduation, B permit has been changed to L permit to stay 6 month more in Switzerland.
If I cannot find any job or position befre the end of Dec,2015... my permit will be expired and I have to go back to my country.
Fortunately, I can stay 90 days more without permit, so it means that I can stay in Switzerland until the end of March 2016.
From Jan to March 2016, I will stay here as a tourist then.
And I am considering to tell my agency around december that I want to move out in 3month.


1. Is it okay to keep my apartment here for 3month as a tourist?


2. and one another question,,
If I get a position which is gonna start in July 2016, probably I have to go back to my country and come back again with new visa or permit.
In this case, can I sublet my apartment to someone for few month??
I mean,, even I do not have a permit here, is it allow to sublet my place?


Please give any advise if you know about this situation..
Thank you for the help.

You don't need a residence permit to rent an apartment in Switzerland. The owners/property management people are not immigration. Living here without a permit would be a completely different matter, though again it is between you and the authorities/immigration, it is not the business of the homeowner/property management people.

Okay, so I will not have any problem to keep the apartment without permit..right?
Thank you for the answer.

You don't need a residence permit to rent an apartment in Switzerland. The owners/property management people are not immigration.

However, if asked, the owners do have to give info to the authorities.

True, but renting an apartment in Switzerland does not automatically mean that that person is living there in that apartment!

hmm yes, and your point is

The point is that the owners' word will not be enough to go on for the authorities to prove anything concerning the persons that may or may not be living there.

- they can ask the Post Office too- and of course not unusual for immigration to post under-cover agents to assess a situation.

I do wonder about the 90 days as a tourist- can you really tag this on at the end of a permit, really?

I doubt the post office will dish out information willy-nilly. There would have to be an official legal request. Moreover receiving mail at one particular address still doesn't prove that that person is living permanently or even temporarily at that address! I receive mail for example in Germany and in the U.K. but it doesn't mean to say I reside there or have ever resided there!
As for undercover agents: for what reason? In order to combat illegal immigration or foreigners overstaying after their permit has expired? I doubt there will be much in the way of money being allotted for such activities, for it's a lost battle with open borders I fear! Given the high number of illegal immigrants in Switzerland already, someone overstaying by a couple of months isn't even the tip of the iceberg! Not sure. But I don't really see that it is going to bother anyone at all even if someone did find out! It's hardly a threat to national security!

No. He'll have to leave the country and come back to be a tourist.

Is it necessary to physically leave and reenter? Would that actually be checked?

Two things that come to mind. Won't you get some paperwork from the immigration authorities towards the expiration date of your permit? Also, I understand that 90 in 180 days are counted from the date of arrival. Unless you can prove the date of arrival, you risk running into trouble upon your future visits to the Schengen area (as long as it exists). My 5 Rappen.

not for you of course, we all know you are immune to Swiss Law

The person will have to de-register or will be de-registered automatically- what about Health Insurance and tax? The Government, local, Cantonal or Confederation can at any time request information from employers, from rentors, and from utilities (water, electricity, tv, etc)- re any person living in the area and not duly registered with the Commune. (I have the official document in front of me here). Might get away with 3 months- but will definitely end up on a register which would make it very hard to ever come back.

Wrong, it is in the owners interest for the person living in a rented apartment to register. I was a month late in registering when I arrived here and I was fined because the owner had already told the kreisburo I was living there and given them the contract.

Also the owner can be fined 10,000 CHF if an illegal immigrant is living in his/her property, and that is for starters.

If the individual deregisters, then he/she is no longer a resident of Switzerland and thus is no longer liable to pay Swiss health insurance of any kind, nor is he/she required to pay tax (from that moment on). Of course it is still possible that several bills may arrive well after deregistering, especially if they have a Krankenkasse or treatment centres that is/are particularly slow in invoicing, and a tax bill might come even a year or more later! (I am not immune to Swiss law; not quite sure what you mean there.)

It may be in the owners interest (I never said it wasn't), but the owner is not immigration.

The fact remains that you can rent an apartment in Switzerland without needing to produce any residence permit at all. I know this as I did it myself upon arrival, I also stayed over a year in the apartment before registering and nobody ever queried anything, least of all the owner. After all, I had paid a deposit guarantee, what more do they need?!

In border cantons in fact it is highly typical that non-residents rent small flats in Switzerland, as they may work here. But even if they don't, it still has nothing to do with the owner! It is between the tenant and immigration.

Signing a rental contract does not mean you are living in the flat, it doesn't mean you have moved in. If you personally received a fine because you had moved in and admitted to the authorities that you were registering late, then that is entirely your own fault and is a totally different matter to the one being discussed.
If though someone receives a fine for registering late because an owner has notified the authorities of their arrival, yet in reality they haven't even moved in (yet), then the fine could easily be contested and annulled insofar as that person is not registering late, they are simply registering upon their actual physical arrival (i.e. with their belongings etc.).

I didn't know about the Fr.10'000.-- fine for property owners who let out their flats to illegal immigrants. Do you have a source for the regulation in question? Can you cite cases where this has actually occurred please?

1. Shouldn't be a problem.

2. Could be a problem. Why? Well, if you've given notice to your landlord that you're leaving March you're not going to be able to sublet it until July now are you? You would either have to hang to it from the end of December, hoping you find another job or simply give it up in March and find a new place if/when you get another job here. And there's no guarantee a new job would even be in the same canton which is another problem for you as non-EU nationals are supposed to live in the same canton that their workplace is located in.

Entry date for tourist status shouldn't be difficult to prove. After all the authorities will give him a document showing that's he's deregistered as being a resident which ought to act as an entry date as a tourist don't you think?

I have asked to the government about staying for 90days more after the expiration of my permit.
And they told me that I don't need to be out from EU physically for this purpose. But just I have to carry my expired permit to prove that I was legally staying in Switzerland before as a tourist.

Exactly. You don't need a residence permit to rent an apartment in Switzerland. The landlord/property management office are not immigration!

I don't see why a tourist can rent a hotel/airbnb to stay but cannot rent an apartment.