ladies and gents, I wish to have your opinion/advices as I am struggling with my Geneva regie(apartment manager)...

Background: I will move out of the apartment by end April(the only legal date I have in my contract), I have sent a letter to stop the contract in Jan and the regie confirmed. It was a non-furnished rental and I bought all the furnitures and home appliances from the previous tenant in 2017 when I entered, there was even a washing machine installed in the bathroom, a sofa, and even the mattress can't enter the tiny elevator/lift which makes it difficult to move. My regie has quite poor Google review, 3 stars with hundreds of reviews and I generally find them very difficult to communicate with.

Legally I don't have any obligation to find a subsitute tenant to replace me, but I have let a few people to visit because I wish to make a win-win deal for everyone: my only interest is to find a tenant who accepts my all IKEA furnitures, I just don't want to have the trouble to disassemble, rent a truck, move and re-assemble them. I thought this would save the regie from searching for a tenant, I have an average rent for the neighborhood, and the vacant apartment rate in Geneva is quite low. I already have 2 people who have good documents(salary etc) and want to take my apartment with its current state and with my IKEA furnitures.

Last Monday, I called the regie but the lady managing my building is on maternity leave and her colleague who takes care of my building during her absence was not interested in me finding them a subsitute tenant. She told me that owners will make their decision about if they rent the apartment immediately. She also suggested me to sell all my furnitures to be sure not having any problem. She also refused to either transfer my proposal to owners or to put me in contact with them.

Thursday, the regie sent a "technical" guy for the pre-inspection. I learnt from him that there will be a different regie company which will manage our building from April, the current regie guy and 2 guys from the new regie entered my apartment and took lots of photos. I expressed my interest to find a subsitute tenant to avoid having to empty the room but these "technical" guys are not interested. The current regie guy says he will transfer the photos to the owners of the building(which I have no contact). and they want to do some renovation work for the floor in the apartment, even it is possible to vacate the furnitures to the balcony temporarily during the renovation, when I insisted my question.

Today I received a letter from regie, saying that they want the apartment to be empty when I left and otherwise they will charge me this and that.

With 2 potential tenants already on my hand(there were 10+ people who wants to visit my apartment), is there a way to avoid the scenario of having to vacating the apartment and getting rid of the furnitures?

I thought about writing to owners directly with my proposal, However I can't find a phone number or website, even I have found its entry in the commercial register. I also thought about entering in contact with the new regie(despite I haven't understood their name), but the current regie guy told me in front of them that the change of regie woudn't affect me as owners are the decision makers.

Furniture is your problem. Unfortunately for you you normally have to hand over the place in the same state as when you got in = empty and clean.

You tried to negotiate, they are not interested. As far as I can see you have exhausted your options.
Why are you complicating things so much? Disassembling/assembling IKEA furniture is not rocket science.

You need to empty the apartment.

Tom

Offer the furniture for free on anibis.ch or tutti.ch. Tell people they have to disassemble and arrange the transport themselves. Someone will show up and take it.

Put all on Ricardo for CHF5.

But they didn't.

As suggested try places like tutti, anibis, ricardo, etc. Heck, if you have enough posts offer the stuff for free here in the Market Place Free Stuff section.

You could also see if HIOB are willing to come that far for the stuff if it's in good condition.

https://hiob.ch/en/home-clearing/

Or contact your local Swiss Red Cross or other local charities to see if they'd like to have your items.

Yes they did. <<It was a non-furnished rental and I bought all the furnitures and home appliances from the previous tenant in 2017>>

Unfortunately for you, OP, if I were the new régis I wouldn't take all this bother on me either. So you'll have to hand back an empty flat.

Which means while it may have been clean, it wasn't empty.

No, the new tenant's (OP) furniture were already in there.

The rental agreement states that it is a non furnished flat, correct?

In this case, you need to leave it clean and empty.

The fact that you bought appliances and furniture from previous tenant is not relevant for the Régie.

Moreover, if you are leaving your flat while giving proper notice (as you stated, end of April for your contract), you do not have to look for a sub tenant, which means the Régie can decide to renovate (or not) the apartment when you leave.

If they accept your suggested tenants, they probably won't be able to increase rent either.

Some Régies also have long waiting lists for flats, and they might already have somebody lined up.

To answer your question... if the landlord is not interested in your tenents, I don't think there is anything you can do about your furniture.

There are two more things I'd like to mention...

Even if you had broken your lease earlier and had provided a solvent tenent to take over the lease, you may still have had to remove your furniture.
Providing the solvent tenent to take over the lease obliges the landlord to let you leave earlier without pentalty, but does not actually oblige the landlord to rent to the tenent that you proposed. This could have simply changed the date your rental contract ended, but done nothing to release you of the obligation to leave a clean, empty and undamaged flat.

Please read up on the renters association website (Mietverband in German, I don't know what it is in French) about the process of ending a rental contract. There you'll find a lot of uesful advice about the process.

Whilst i have heard of the 'you take my stuff' thing happening, as others have said it has nothing to do with the owner or real estate agent. And very often, as you are discovering, is in the favour of the person leaving more than the new one arriving.

There are many reasons why the landlord may not want to take your offer of another tenant...
- they want the place to be fully clean on the handover
- they have someone else already lined up to take the flat
- they want to increase the rent
- they want to do substantial renovations
- they want to move in themselves...

None of these things are in your control. As others have said, you need to take responsiblity for your stuff, and start getting rid of it now...

Most people seem to want to avoid taking things to the rubbish bin and paying to get rid of it, but our local waste transfer station is very when we bring our own stuff - it costs a lot if you need to pay for someone else to take it away.

Identify what you don't want, list it immediately as others have said - on EF, Tutti, Ricardo or Facebook marketplace, and get rid of it that way... or take responsibility for your 'stuff' and take it with you.



Oh, one more idea, which I have not seen done but I would do myself when moving... put the pictures on a piece of paper with your phone number or email address, and drop it into your neighbour's letter boxes.... they may be very happy to take stuff for free/cheaply if they know they just need to carry it from one flat to the other. - when we moved from our previous apartment, which was a demolition building, the little-old-swiss-lady downstairs, who was also moving out, knocked on our door and asked if we wanted anything - as we were also moving and had a big truck arranged, it was easy for us to add a few things from her place to our moving - we scored a whole bedroom set and kitchen table and 'nook' this way - they were not pretty or valuable ('vintage' 1980's melamine and pine) but they were free and functional and lasted another 5-10 years before we gradually replaced them...

I'm guessing the IKEA stuff is now at least 6 or 7 years old depending on how long the previous tenant was there for. I'd imagine knowing IKEA, after 5 years it's pretty tatty, and I say this from experience as we furnish all our rentals from IKEA and after 5 years have to replace it all. Cupboards do tend to last longer though!

If you put all your stuff on Facebook Marketplace people will come and pick it up... especially old stuff you put 0 CHF as price.

You save money to hire a mover

You're kidding, right? We've got IKEA bookcases that are 30 odd years old and are fine.

Ah, but then those Billy´s last for ever (mine do now for at least 20 years)

Likewise.

But we also have stuff that is 2-500 years old, and a bunch of Etruscan and Greek pottery that is more than a couple thousand years old.

Tom

Thanks people, I have learnt quite some info and tips from you, below relying to a few individual posts

it wasn't empty, all the furnitures and home appliances from the previous tenant were there, and I bought them.


1.if the owners were informed about my proposal and are not interested, I would have accepted. but I don't know if the current regie has even bothered to transfer my proposal to the owners(by accepting the future tenant I introduced), cf. my original post,

2. Well I am not complicating things but trying to simplify it. Before CH I always lived in furnished apartments and never bother to change or assemble the furniture. This was why I have bought the furnitures etc from previous tenant, to save my time and her time. I have almost never assembled/disassembled anything myself.


I hope so, as mentioned, we have a tiny elevator/lift, even I offer for free, I have no idea if people will come and take the big sofa for example and how they transport it. and I wouldn't even take it myself if someone offered it to me for free.


Thanks, I agree. I was thinking to reach out to owners to make sure that they have at least heard my proposal as the current regie refuses to transfer this proposal.


Thanks, FYI, the French one is called ASLOCA

if the owners were informed about my proposal and are not interested, I would have accepted. but I don't know if the current regie has even bothered to transfer my proposal to the owners(by accepting the future tenant I introduced), cf. the phone call described in my original post.

Thanks a lot, your last idea is brilliant. My only concern is 1-2 cumbersome(doesn't enter the lift) and unattractive furnitures, which I am worried that no one wants.

The "owners" normally aren't interested in dealing with such nonsense, which is why they pay a management company to do it!

I have never rented nor bought a place here with stuff in it, except for the rustico which had some cool stuff in it which we were happy to keep, and the seller showed up a few days later with a truck to take away the stuff we didn't want.

Tom