Lessor asking for direct deposit payment to his account

Accomodation, House and Garden
1
Hello,

I am new to Switzerland (~2 months), I finally got a rent contract after a lot of visits and applications.

I have a contract and everything is ready for me to move from my temporary accommodation to my new apartment.

Agreed to pay a deposit of 3 month to a deposit account (which is something normal and I am fine with), I submitted all the paper to the lessor for creating the account, now a couple of days before my move, the lessor asked me to send them the payment directly and they will move it to the deposit account when it is ready/available.

I asked a couple of friends (Swiss and non Swiss) and they said this is not normal, on the other hand the person hired from my company to help me with the finding the home (works on the immo market), said that this is common practice.

I am now a bit confused, is this something common or I should just not send the payment and tell them that I will send it directly to the account?

Please note that the home find assistant can use this as an excuse that I did not follow their advice, or should I just send email to the assistant letting them that I am considering their advice as a guarantee and they are liable for any issues?

Thanks,

2
I’d be cautious. I’d tell them you have the money and will transfer it immediately as soon as he provides the account details. Also tell him you don’t want to waste his time on an administrative detail.

If he insists ask him for the reasons why.

You are absolutely certain the place exists and he has the right to rent it? Maybe stop by and knock on the door?

3
This is a small company, I visited the place and i am sure they exist and we had post correspondance, I read here https://www.mieterverband.ch/mv/miet...sicherung.html That I can consider this as advance payment for the rent if they do not put it on the custody account, I am fine with this, also the page state that while the rules are differnt this is still common for landlords to hold the deposit in private account, now in my case they are just stating that they will do that as soon as the account is available.

I will wait for more people to weight in before I decide how to proceed with this.

I have no alternative now to this rent, so on the date I may need to go to hotel for a long period (end of year holidays so not possible to get a new place if things go the wrong way).

4
Setting up an account for rental guarantee is very quickly done.....

Speak with your bank and tell them of the urgency

5
Like Biro said, since also you can open a "Mietzinsdepot konto", just make sure to be in agreement with the managing company and/or landlord about it.

6
Yes, I have already send the signed form for opening the account and it was just missing their signature, and this should have not took two weeks to setup.

I will first send my relocation assistant the link, then send the lessor asking them politely that I would prefer to send the money directly to the custody account and that I can proceed with paying the first month advance to their private account.

7
Sounds a bit suspect.

But, usually the process of opening a blocked account means the landlord fills out a form, landlord sends the form to the bank, the bank signs their part in the form and they send the form to you to sign by post. You return it, and they finally send the orange deposit form to pay. This can easily take a couple weeks and we're very close to Christmas, meaning the whole thing ready until next year. This may explain why the landlord is requesting something a bit suspect.

Maybe an option is to ask the landlord how to speed up the process of opening the account. Offer to sign and return documents the same day you receive them and assert you want to do things properly.

By the way, when are you moving in? 1st Jan 2022? Landlord should be under pressure because it's a very unusual moving date. If you have not shown up, this flat/house would probably stay empty until some months later.

8
Thank your for your input, I sent the signed form a couple of weeks (26 Nov), so I am assuming the landlord also signed and sent to the bank, last Monday I called to check and their told them that they will send the payment slip this Monday/Tuesday but they sent one for their account.

I am moving 16th of December.

i am not stating that the landlord is suspicious or anything of the sort, but I would like to stick to the law and rules, and would expect the landlord to not ask for something that is not the right/lawful way of handling things.

I just sent the landlord an email, telling them that I would prefer to send the money directly to the custody account and if they had issues with setup of the account I can go to the bank, and asked them for the private account to send the first month gross rental and charges (door plate and such changes..)

An other thing that is not clear for me, is there a difference between me sending the money to the custody account or the lessor doing that? as in case of conflict at the end of the contract?

9
Perfect, you're aware of these documents passing through lots of hands. So, it seems the docs got lost between bank and landlord.

I'm the one saying suspect because there are clear rules and procedures. However, the whole thing may just be a misunderstanding or documents lost somewhere.

I don't want to that condescending guy but.........office people at that level is not that bright. 2 different topics within one single email may be too much for some people. The payment form might be for the first month rent and the question about the deposit account may have been not understood at all.

I'd check with the bank if the forms were sent to landlord and then ask the landlord kindly to return the forms to the bank to do the deposit payment.

10
Rent you can pay to whichever account he asks for to be paid for. Once it's paid, you have a trace in form of debit advice from your bank and it's money that has been "spent" anyway.

A rental deposit is different as it is your money, help as a deposit in case of damages and in theory you get this back once the appartement is handed back.

11
It's an escrow account. Not saying that CS is a good option, but usual procedure here https://www.credit-suisse.com/ch/en/...s-account.html . It does not matter who sends it to the bank, as both signatures are required. You just have to agree on the bank. My landlord is a lazy bum, so I took care of it, had him sign, sent it, received confirmation, sent the money, provided evidence to landlord.

It is by no means usual to send the deposit to the landlord's account.

12
Actually the email clearly state custody account and the amount is 3x months of rent.

13
So, there's no confusion......it seems the only way forward is to get the landlord to sign the mietzins depot account docs. I guess you don't want to start the apartment hunt once again.

No idea how to do it since it's not showing any will to sign and send the docs to the bank. EFers, any suggestion?

14
It might depend on the timeframe.

In our case we indeed did the same as per our landlord request. We checked with out agent, and she said it should be fine.

So, our situation was that we got papers from bank and signed by landlord at time point X (I forgot), then we signed and scanned and our agent sent it to the bank, and it took quite a time there, but bank rejected that since it was a printout.

Our move in date was 1st October, so we had to pay the rent before that + deposit had to be done before that.

I forgot at which time before 1st Oct we got the information form the bank, but close to our move in date (like week, max two), so landlord proposed that we transfer the money to his account, that we sign the papers for bank when we come and we did, it took bank I think a week or so. And indeed, landlord transferred the money before we even managed to tell them that we got the info from the bank that the account is opened.

Today is 13th, you're moving in 3 days from now, and since account still isn't open, and landlord wants to see this deposit money, yeah I can see why they'd like to see them at least in their account if nothing else.

If everything else was smooth and with zero yellow or red flags, and you feel good about the thing, proceed.

If in doubt, yes, make precautions, like agree to put just 1/3 or half of deposit until the account is opened, check with mieterverband if that's viable option, something like 'pay deposit in installments'

I had zero issues with our case, but I was aware of time constraint and everything else sounded and felt just right. And everything went totally fine.

But indeed, we're doing things directly with the landlord, not some agency/hauswervaltung they've hired to do things for them. And our landlord has few dozen flats in the area, and our previous tenant said that they've never had a better landlord, an they've seen the world and rented a bunch (actually, they just moved to another, bigger flat of his).

So, go with your gut feeling - if something is off, insist on precautionary measures.

Hell, even see if you can do this 'deposit insurance' thing if that'd be faster.

15
That's how it's to be done. 3x is the legal maximum, so looks Ok, just make sure the account is in your name. The account type should be something like "MietZinsDepot", "KautionsDepot", or similar, that's to make sure keeping the deposit/account doesn't come with any cost.

16
Thank you all for the advices.

First I want to clarify some points.

The lessor is a company (seems to be a family company), and the building is huge one no small houses and are on the top tier of apartments.

My assistant is someone with 20 years experience in the Zurich market (something my company confirmed).

Also I was today informed that the assistance service take liability (as part of the contract) to any advice they provide.

Similar to @blacky case, i received two different emails from the lessor and my assistance, the lessor stating that this is because they need to have the deposit before the handover or we will need to postpone it until the custody account is available from the bank, and the assistance stating the same earlier that from their experience this happens when the account is not created in time and there is a possibility to miss the handover date.

Aside from this the lessor was okay before for us using swisscaution, I was the one against using it and paying high interests/premiums on a loan I don’t need, at some point I was considering it, I thought that this is some kind of liability insurance for the deposit but that was not the case so I did not go through with it.

So finally I just went with rental assistance advice, i still have the transaction to the company, so in worst case I can claim that as rental payment.

17
If you have an experienced person helping you, there is really no reason why you should be in this situation.

If you hold a US passport, sometimes this creates problems/delays opening any bank account, including the rental deposit account.

When timing is very tight, property management companies will have deposits paid into their company's account but they transfer the funds over to the correct account once it is opened. How often this takes place I don't really know, but I've seen this work out just fine.

I truly hope your landlord will transfer the money as soon as the account is set up.