35.5K CHF for 'anteilkapital' requested by the landlord

Accomodation, House and Garden
1
My search here for the word "anteilkapital", resulted that it is quite similar to the typical deposit. Yet, one of the flats I applied for requested 35,500 CHF as anteilkapital, instead of the typical 6K something deposit for that rent. Why would anyone pay that? Is it a reasonable investment? They said one can even withdraw the amount from their pension.

2
Sounds like you're looking at a cooperative building rather than a "normal" rental...

3
Genossenschaftswohnung.

Tom

4
Probably a Genossenschaft Wohnung. Basically a non profit oriented landlord.

https://www.immoscout24.ch/de/c/d/im...ng?a=2572#gref

The depot is 5-10% of the value of the apt.

5
Why would I give them the 35K? Is there a higher interest rate?

6
You get better interest on it than on a regular rent depot.

You pay lower rent.

You have a say in the building expenses.

7
Not necessarily.

We lived for several years in a cooperative building in Geneva where we'd had to buy 'shares' rather than pay a standard deposit. Although in theory the shares would earned interest in reality the Cooperative statutes reserved the right to spend any interest earned on the upkeep and maintenance of its buildings.

Although our building was brand new and didn't require any, the other buildings were decades old and all urgently required major refurbishing. So, we got nothing extra after ten years and we had a bit of a struggle getting our share money back as well.

Read the small print!!!!

8
Why the struggle? More than that of getting the normal deposit back? Our current flat's deposit is also in shares I think. Is there anything I should do differently for the handover?

9
Crazy! If you've got 10% you can buy (assuming you have the other 10 in 2nd or 3rd pillar)

10
An absolute must. If you do not understand the language, best to not sign anything.

Sadly many do not know they are going to have problems until they move out. Cooperatives have their own rules and the return of the deposits falls under whatever is in the contract.

11
Can you elaborate a bit more, please? What are the possible things to happen? I just checked my contract and couldn't find anything special.

12
This particular Cooperative tried to claim that after five years we could no longer take the money out of their system and had to retain the shares.

Fortunately we had read the statutes carefully before signing up and could point out that the shares were tied to the appartment and the rules clearly said that the new occupant had to buy our shares when they took over the lease.

13
Then what were they going to do with the new tenan't deposit?

14

I would imagine they simply thought they could issue new shares for the new tenants and use the extra interest from them as more funds for their refurbishing programme.

The committee members were all elderly men and I doubt they really understood the system their accountant had set up when that particular Cooperative was established in the seventies.

We got our funds back with a couple of months (which was quite rapid compared to the time some agents take), so I didn't enquire further into it.