First of all, thanks to everyone who has contributed to this forum in terms of help to rent an apartment. All your advices have helped me a lot. I also want to share my experience of flat hunting for total newbies as I am.

I'm a PhD student at ETH university since a middle of November 2016 (less than 3 months in Switzerland). My salary is not so high by local means, moreover I'm married so I need a dedicated apartment to make my life.

I have read lot of local posts about difficulties to find a permanent apartment in Zurich, especially for a novice in Switzerland. My case is also a bit more complicated because I'm still on a probation period of three months. So I want to share my experience and hope it will help someone to find a good starting spot in Zurich.

The first thing you need to do is to prepare all the documents to not to lose your time. Here is a list of the documents I used:

• Motivation letter
• Betreibungsregister
• Copy of working contract
• Reference letter from the current landlord
• Copy of current rental contract
• Prove of local registration from current estate agency
• Copy of residence permit
• Copy of passport
• Curriculum vitae
• A photo of you and your family

Motivation letter and curriculum vitae are very important documents. You need to show that you really need an apartment and you are the right person. In a motivation letter write about yourself and your family, why are you in Switzerland and how long, how do you communicate with neighbours and what are your habits. Curriculum vitae (in a short form) will also help you to show that you are the right person to rent for: you are a working person, you are a professional. Do not write obvious things like paying in time - of course you must pay in time.

You should prepare all those documents and merge them into a single PDF file in advance. That is very important to make a single file because it will make easier for any estate agent to read your documents and not to look through the dozen files. It is also more convenient to print your data with a single file.

Prepare a list of potential properties ahead. I made an Excel file with the following columns: city, rooms, space, price, available date, contact name, contact phone, URL. You can make a separate sheet for each website. With this approach you can easily sort the places by any criteria, mark any place with different colour (i.e. green for appointment, yellow for waiting more information, red for potentially unavailable) and safe your time by managing different properties.

Visit 2-3 properties in a day. Do not wait! If you can visit a property the same day - just do it! it will increase your chances. After selecting preliminary properties, add 2-3 fresh properties to visit every day. Your visiting schedule should be like a pipeline: load it as much as possible first, then add more to maintain the visiting stream.

The most important step is to properly target potential apartments. I was told in several places that brutto rent shouldn't be more than 1/3 of your salary. Breaking this rule you will reduce your chances and will waste your time visiting properties. Also take into account that it should be around 18-20 sq meters for each person in the apartment. In one place (36 sq meters) I was rejected for 2 persons.

Fill in every application form in German/French. It is not difficult, but will increase your chances. I noticed that not all agencies have English-speaking personal, so filling the form in English can reduce your chances. Use various online translation services. For example, I received an offer from the agency, where none of the employees speaks English. If it is not mentioned, use brutto salary in the application form.

On the first stage it will be very difficult for you to get a place right in the city, so it makes more sense to look around the city itself. Just look around the city, i.e. 30 minutes to work. I tried to look in Zurich city itself, but the competition was too high (50 persons and more). As a novice your chance is close to zero. Looking in the city suburbs will increase your chances (I faced only up to 10 competitors). The best option is to setup your budget for apartment+cost of transport within a desirable amount of time to get to the work.

It is very important to visit every place in person. I have faced situations when pictures were nice, but the place itself was awful. Apartments near the airport can be too noisy, also.

After visiting a place, fill in an application form the same day. This is very important! Do not wait! For example, I filled in an application at the evening, and the next morning I received an offer for the renting. Agency can choose the first eligible person, so send an application as soon as possible.

I recommend to duplicate your application by email with a regular post. For example, I sent 8 applications by email, and 3 of them were moved to a spam folder. This means that your should also call an agency after a day after sending an application. Just check that they received your documents. Buy envelops and stamps in advance.

For me it took for about 5 days of intensive search to find an apartment in Zurich area. To be honest, I was very afraid of that after reading local forum, but the technique described above helped me a lot. I sent 8 applications in total, from one I received an offer, from another one I received some questions (so I was on a short list of candidates). i hadn't any direct contact with a landlord itself. So the efficiency was about 20-25% which is a fantastic result for a total newbie as me.

I hope all these tips will help someone to get an apartment quickly.

thanks for sharing your experience !!

Very useful tips! In my experience the 2 most important things were filling in forms in German and being very fast - being one of the first to enquire about place and to view it.

Thanks for sharing!

additional info: if you accept a flat but the next day you are offered an other one you prefer, if you cancel the 1st you have to pay 1-2 month-rental fee - just happened to a friend

Yes, if you agree to something and a contract is established, either written or orally and you wish to withdraw, then you pay the penalty.

Would you like it if you agreed to rent and appartement and the landlord pulled out of the deal 1 day later ?

There is much further information concerning renting appartments in this sticky thread.

FAQs - you SURE your question/problem/requirement is unique? Look here before asking

If you find a link which doesn't work, please PM me, telling me exactly which link it is, and I'll see if I dig up the 'newer version'. There is a lot of information in there and far too many links for me to check them over and over again.

Not really. You can get out paying nothing if you can find another sucker to take it. Or can you be on the hook for many many months up to the minimum contractual rent duration if nobody else wants the apartment...

Great experience, it is like a PHD application though. What is being required maybe depends on the landlord or estate agent.

Not everyone is so structured. Why no one comes with their CV's motivation letters to my apartment I don't know.

Another tip - Read the contract before you sign it.

Let me say that again. Read the contract before you sign it.

Don't read German, French or Italian? From a legal standpoint, that's not an excuse if you later disagree with the terms or feel they're unfair. Get a friend or a nice EF member to read it for you and tell you what it says.

I'd also say it's not enough to ask someone who speaks the language if everything is normal or in order. What's normal in Switzerland might not be the same as where you come from - for example where I come from notice periods are often 1 month but if you leave early they just take your security deposit. That's not how it usually works in CH. Ask what the contract actually says.

Good tips, some more things to add:
- It may worth to attach a reference email from your employeer.
- It's worth to get an application form during the visit of the flat. The form is downloadable from the agency's website but sometimes for a fee.
- Betreibungsregister => some agencies request the original document but this can be tricked by making color photo copy.

Wow! We must have it easy in Basel. I've applied for seven of the apartments I've lived in here and never needed anything apart from permit and the betreibung report (and on three of them I didn't even need that). Some of the things above are just ridiculous. I'm not doubting you at all, by the way, just shaking my head at the hoops ZH and probably GE folk have to jump through.

It all depends, in ZH and SH I only had to show a copy of the Betreibungsregister, never even had to show my permit

Once I went to a visit a flat (Besichtigungstermin) there were other 40 people queuing in front of the house. In that case probably helps to send some references. In other places there were nobody else and I could get the flat without too many documents.

Perhaps the best tip missing here is

join Asloca or Mietverband right from the start- a little money really well spent (they will advise and support you, if you ever have problems with your apartment or agency/landlord- and will give priority to existing members- not those who join after the problems are experienced).

your photo is already there if you scanned your permit

Thanks for the tips!

Two questions:

1) Photo of family..formal or like nice vacation photo? Or does it not matter.

2) My wife will be doing her Residency at Uni Bern and thus we are moving..I currently don't have any job lined up, which I assume will affect what type of flat we can 'afford.' I have money saved up..is a copy of bank statement something that I can provide as a substitute for a Working Contract as proof that we can make rent, etc?

Usually there's a cancellation fee. Something between 150CHF - 250CHF. And it's usually written in the form that you fill to apply for the apartment.
Never heard about that 1-2 month fee. That's usually 3 months deposit but that's only for when you leave the apartment and something need to be cleaned or fixed.

I didn't need any reference letter or a copy of my current/old rental contract. A copy of the residence permit was necessary but I also didn't need a copy of my passport and even less my CV (are we applying to a job or to an apartment?).
About the photo, I've been told that's only good to prove that you're white people. If you're black, Asian or from middle east countries is better to avoid photos. Anyway, your name may help them find your cultural roots so still in doubt if a photo will really make worst any kind of discrimination.

Every case is different. Of course, if you have some experience of living here, or have a good and reputable employer who pays you good salary, you don't need to present all those documents. But if you are a newbie just starting to live here, you probably need to provide more. I intentionally mentioned in my first post, that my tips are for total newbies here. And I'm sure that it is a bit different story.

Everyone had been telling me before I started to post applications that I will fail in first months because: I was living only for 2 months (so I couldn't provide 3 last pay slips), I was still on a 3-month probation period, I had an unemployed wife, I was not from EU. Moreover, my PhD salary is not too much high by local means. I mean, a lot of factors were against me, at least for the next several months.

Before that, I read all the topics here related to renting, and I saw all the difficulties people faced before me. So I just tried to analyze all the success stories and all the failed stories to get a better chance in that renting battle. So each item from my documents list is aimed to increase the probability of being selected by a landlord. And nothing more. Of course, each of them (documents) can play a completely different role, and that's why I'm talking about the probability. And I hope my experience also will help other people coming to Switzerland.

Current/old rental contract will show your potential landlord that you are not hiding your previous/current rental experience, which means you treat yourself as a good and responsible tenant, so the landlord can contact your previous landlord and prove that. I'm pretty sure almost any landlord will do that, but still, it shows you from a good point.

About CV. Again, you never know which criteria is crucial for a landlord (and it was discussed dozen times here: a color of your eyes, your name, your previous job, your nationality, children, pets, etc.), and providing him/her a bit more information can help you. Usually, every landlord has already a main criteria, you just need to match it. And one of the criterion can be your working expertise, also. Anyway, if you show that you were a successful man on the previous jobs in another country, the probability that you can do it here if higher. It can help to convince a landlord that you are a serious and professional person who can earn money.

The point of providing more documents at the beginning is to make a landlord more "familiar" with you. Because psychologically people tend to move towards familiar persons (that's my theory) a bit more, and by providing a photo and CV you can present yourself more openly and create a feeling of "familiarity". Maybe in most of the cases it wouldn't work, but in one particular case, it can. And who knows, maybe it will be a house of your dream

Bottom line: the purpose of providing all those documents is to maximize a chance of winning an apartment in a local renting lottery. It is aimed mostly for people with zero experience in Switzerland, the hardest part even if you have a job already.

As for me, I got a nice 2.5-room apartment in a short time, not far from my working place (30 minutes by tram) for good price, and even not on the ground floor. And I'm really happy with it. I don't know if any of the documents has played a crucial role in landlord's decision. But my final advice is: consider your first renting battle as a part of your job and work hard. It's not just simply filling applications, but it's more about being prepared, don't wait that a flat will come for you by its own.