Landlord hiding relevant information

Accomodation, House and Garden
21
You would not know this from reading EF. In certain topic areas call for ensuring you have legal insurance make up every third or fourth post. Many of these threads make it sound like Swiss people go to court on a monthly basis.

22
Non-working features in the building allow you to withhold part of the rent until fixed but if you never lived and paid rent there this is irrelevant.

Even if you had already moved in, you could not have demanded anything for damages, just withheld part of the rent.

23
The OP has my sympathy and I'm rather shocked that they already had a lawyer lined up to deal with this kind of thing.

I personally feel they were obliged to warn you about the lift but would that have changed anything? Finding an apartment is extremely difficult and despite the bad timing of the lift, it would have somehow worked out.

Good luck finding another apartment and hopefully it will be even better than the previous one.

24

It seems very strange the landlord is using a lawyer already unless this is his prefered way of doing business.

The OP is American, probably not used to the ways ofd Switzerland and may have come accross a bit "heavy handed" during the discussion, entitled possible which has resulted in this situation.

Move on, you've lost the appartement either before you move or at the next moving date by termination.

You have no chance of winning, lift was unavoidably delayed by well documented chip shortage due to Covid. We did all that was possible however, unfortuantely this was delayed by a further period beyond our control.

Please don't forget to pay court costs on the way out, large lawyers' bill is in the post

Result Chf 6-7k pissed up against the wall and still no lift of appartement.

25
That is not the point at all.

26
It takes two to tango..... we don’t know both sides of the story, if the OP went in all guns blazing the landlord might have just decided they wanted shot of the OP.

27
No you can't. There are procedures and you'd have to lodge the disputed amount, with reasons, at the conciliation office (not sure of the name in German) informing the landlord at the same time.

Most landlords do. It's not only landlords that can be the nasty one's!

28
The big problem in OP's line of arguing is that the wife's climbing stairs post partum has been the intent the entire time as the lift repair had been planned, since January when the signed the rental contract, for two months after their planned moving in last week (as per his #8).