I am a project manager currently working in Poland. I've just recently received an offer for a job in Zurich as a project manager in a bank for 9 month project. The offered salary is 800CHF/day.
I've got 6 years experience in PM, Prince2Pract. certficiates and here in Poland I'm very good at what I do.
I use English everyday at work so it's not a problem but I only speak Deutsch a little bit (I understand a lot).
Three questions come into mind:
1. Is it a decent salary? I've found on other posts that I could expect around 1000chf per day for a job like this especially on short projects ?
2. We want to rent an apartment in Uster (around 100sqm for 2500chf), how much can I expect to spend on necessities (excluding apartment, tickets etc) each month to sustain a family of four (kids 1&3years old) ?
3. Out of my monthly salary how much can I expect to spend on job agency?
Regarding cost of life: my long term average for a family with 4 kids (young children) is about 7k pcm including rent, and that's w/o eating out, vacations in hotels, new iPhones every two years for everybody or two SUVs to maintain. So a blue-collar life-style but for a larger-than-average family.
Life is easily 2-3 times more expensive here than in Poland.
Is it that hard to find a place to stay? I looked through homegate several times and found a lot of apartment that would suit me. I already did some location scouting on site to find nice areas to live. Are there more problems to expect except 3 monthly rent's up front and detailed contract when signing?
Are Swiss people reluctant to rent to foreigners/people not speaking deutsch?
Well I guess you will need a fixed time rental place?
If not the you usually have three days in a year you can quit you rental contract. And sometimes you have to agree to minimal duration you will stay, say maybe one year.
However the lack of german will not be much of a problem except to know what you are signing up to, when we got our first apartment we spoke no german at all and it made no difference. We had at least 6 places to choose from.
Your greater challenge will be only having a 9 month contract as the standard minimum rental contract is 1 year so there is likely to be relictance to give you a place if you only have work for 9 months
Surely you mean owners market as there is an over supply of people wanting to rent not less hence the price able to be asked is pretty much up to the owner
if you only have a 9 month contract I would insist the employing company rent the apartment on my behalf, or agree to take over any liability on the apartment if they don't renew the contract.
My brother ended up paying rent on a house in Manhattan for a year, he never even moved in !
Rents here are somewhat regulated, thus the owners of older properties couldn't profit from the recent boom. However, new apts or renovated may be let for current market prices.
On the real-estate websites you'll see some places to rent, but all these reasonably priced will have many interested people (10-30, depending on the city). E.g. a 3 bedroom and a living room apt in Lausanne may be in older places for 1800-2200, and these are extremely difficult to get, or a 3500,- and more which are waiting to be rented.
If you don't care about city life, you may try looking out of a city.
I think your biggest problem would be that you'd only want an apartment for 9 months. From people at my company in a similar situation not many landlords want to do that - it's more work for them then renting to someone that wants to stay there for years!
And since landlords usually require a reference from the employer with employment status and salary, they'd figure out that you're only here for 9 months even if you don't tell them
As others have suggested do try to negotiate getting an apartment as part of the contract.
Many thanks for the replies. So the conclusion is to renegotiate the contract above 1000chf per day and also try to make it an hourly rate so 125/hour.
My plan is to stay for a longer time - my wife and I always wanted to live in Switzerland especially near lakes and mountains and the contract is way to achieve this goal.
So I will not hessitate to sign a year-long lease for apartment. But as many people mentioned it might be a problem because my job won't be secured for whole year (my contract will end after 9 months) . Can I remove this problem my just placing additional 3 months rent on the table?
Can someone also advice me on how much % will take contracting agency take of my salary ? Or is it better to just register my own company and print invoices? (but this causes cash flow problem)