Hi mighty englishforum,

I am new to Switzerland and found a lot of useful threads here since I started looking for an apartment. Firstly thanks for the useful information.

Now I finally found an apartment after several months of search but the situation seems a bit weird to me, I did not find any thread that is similar to my case but apologize first if I missed anything.

So I received the contract, but it is only signed by the rental agent, not the landlord, the contract was clear that the company was representing the landlord. Also, it was only signed by an employee of the agency, not a company stamp. Yet the rent payment was made to the landlord in person, the orange slip shows only the landlord's name...

I asked around and looks like usually if the agent signed the lease then the orange slip has the agency's name. But I do not know that many people either so that does not prove much.
I wonder if this is a scam or does anybody know anything about what to do in this case?

Thanks in advance!

Sounds normal to me.

Tom

That's how mine was done. I pay the landlord but the contract is with the agent. The agent set up the account for the deposit.

I'd add, if your point of contact was the agent all the time, or landlord told you an agent will handle that further, I see no issues.

I'd worry only if agent came up out of the blue in the equation while you were talking only with landlord directly until now, then I'd check with landlord to see what's going on.

For example, for my flat in Berlin, we had agent show us the flat, Hausverwaltung signed the contract with us and bunch of people were there - 2x from Hausverwaltung, one from owner and Hausmeister from their side, I think I haven't forgot anyone, not sure if agent was there as well. Also, owner is a company.
I see term Regie mentioned often, I assume it's the same thing as Hausverwaltung, so maybe in your case agent == Regie, eg ones who will be your point of contact for any issues along the line.

And after some time they sold the building and old Hausverwaltung send us information about that, papers which we have to sign to transfer deposit between the companies and so on.

And owner just collects the money

The agent handles anything to do with your rental.
The landlord gets the money.
The landlord pays the agent.

It's fine. The only thing you need to make sure is that the deposit account is in your name.

Thanks all for the inputs! Looks like it is a normal procedure then.
we have only contacted the agent so far and never seen the owner, just the owner's name is mentioned in the contract. And the deposit account is in our name opened with standard bank forms.

I will post an update when there is an ending.