Gruezi everyone,

First post on here. We (young family with 2 kids) will be relocating to Zurich from the US in March 2010 and are looking at renting an apartment or little house (less likely). Was wondering about a couple of issues:

- Are there "seasons" (school semesters, calender year?) for rentals to come on the market more frequently than at other times?

- How long beforehand are rentals usually posted, in other words, when is a good time to visit and hopefully find something before actually moving? Ads I've seen ranged from immediately to 4-5 months into the future, so I am not quite sure where the peak is. We would prefer to move right into a longer-term home rather than spending weeks in some temporary arrangement, and organizing a pre-visit better be in the right time scale to land a good deal as we cannot go more than once before moving.

- For a first-time move to Switzerland, what are the bureaucratic hurdles to sign a rental contract? We're German/Canadian citizens, and wondering how/whether issues like credit check, visa check, background check, income verification etc are to be expected, long they take, and whether they are likely to be undertaken before actually moving there?

- Good locations to live are of course equally important but I will dive into the many threads on here momentarily, just added for completeness :-)

Sorry to jump right in with all these questions but I am sure the level of experience here is rather comprehensive on these topics! I see that there are similar threads already running, but I would think our case of going to Zurich with a (canadian- and EU-citizen) household of 4 might warrant different answers than those I've seen..

Thank you so much for any help, much appreciated!