I am living in an appartment building where one owner is living on each floor.
I am renting my appartment.

Yesterday then ceiling came down in the bathroom of the guy downstairs.
I am now wondering: If the water is coming from a pipe in my appartment, will my insurance pay or will it be the insurance of the owner of my flat?

I should have an insurance against such things, thus I am only wondering how things are done here in Switzerland.

Not related to our Mrs Sutter, are you??

The homeowner's group are required to have an insurance policy on the building itself but I'm not sure if the water leaking from one apartment into the next is covered by it. Most likely the owner of the apartment you're renting has insurance which might cover such damages. Either way, unless you did something directly to cause the leak, you shouldn't be held liable for damages.

Thank you.

I think the guy upstairs/the owner of the building is at fault. Depends on how the leak started. Anyway it's one of their insurance companies that will probably have to pay out. I would call your insurance company. They will probably need the details of the owner of the building + the occupancy upstairs

No insurance company likes to give money out and somehow this will be sorted out between them.

Watch it you, or i will eat you, i like cookies

OP a few years ago our neighbour upstairs had a water leak that caused us to have water marks running down our walls, the owner of our building paid for the repairs

Water damange is part of the Building insurance (Gebäudeversicherung) which is mandatory for all house owners.

So here's another question:

Why is building insurance mandatory?

(I honestly don't know)

As I happen to have the annual report from the canton Zurich building insurance on my desk, let me answer this one:

The premium (-.32 per 1000 CHF insured) is divided into the regular building insurance (-.22) and financing of the fire protection system which by nature has to be solidaric as the fire brigades are expected to always answer .

-.04 are preventively spent for inspections of the fire police. The remaining -.06 are spent for the fire brigade infrastructure (subsidisation of material, vehicles, buildings; financing of the 14 decentral fire stations; crew education; alert systems; water hydrant network maintenance)

The -.06 for the fire brigades ad up to 23.6 mil. CHF which makes up 62% of the canton Zurich fire brigades' bugdet. I'm surprised though that the budget is just 38 mil. CHF, maybe I've missed a part of the financing.

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It's so low as there aren't any fires in homes in Switzerland. Or so the Swiss seem to think.

That's why no one has smoke detectors fitted...except us!

Perhaps the electric stoves instead of gas burners minimize the risk of fire a lot!

I'm thinking of wooden swiss houses, cigarettes, open fires.....

Some statistics would be interesting (possibly)

Can you elaborate on that a bit? We had a flooded basement (thanks to faulty construction) several times during rainy periods, and our lovely landlord (Livit - may they rot in heck) told us to claim our damages on our insurance, because they (Livit) or their insurance were not going to cover it.

Normally the building structure (and repairs to it) is covered by the buildings insurance and the contents (your personal effects) is covered by your contents insurance.

The landlord appears to be correct in what he is saying.