is there anyone in the forum living in Fribourg? My job has moved completely remote now as long as I stay in Switzerland and so the housing market has opened significantly We are looking at a property in Freibour at the edge of a national park, still German speaking. Both my partner and I have grown up in the sticks so we yearn to go back to being able to take a bike out and not having a lot of neighbors.
I know cantonal and community tax in FR are a lot higher than in Zurich where we are now, but is there anything in your experience / knowledge that I should check additionally that I am not thinking about..?
You mentioned in your last post that you're learning German. Just note that the dialect there is a lot harder to understand than the dialect in Zürich.
If that makes any difference to one learning the language, I'm not sure, I just know I even have to have colleagues from there repeat things from time to time.Probably the strongest Swiss-German dialect after Wallis.
There are some parts of it with really beautiful nature and property is significantly cheaper than neighbouring Bern and much more than Zürich.
In a way I am looking forward to that. Right now everywhere I go everyone keeps swapping for English very quickly; I have to understand every minute detail at work, so I can't use it there, and all of my friends are also non-Swiss so the language of the conversation is English. It's great and makes me very comfortable, but at the same time this is the first country I lived in where I don't speak the language after a few years, and I feel like I should if I intend to stay.
Also, yeah - property prices are better, that's what makes it possible for me to buy in the first place. No chance in Zurich.
I can’t think of anything particular Ragnar. Obviously do your due diligence before buying somewhere. Also you’ll probably need a public notary who speaks English to go through the purchase contract with you since that will be in German. If you want I can give you the details of the firm we used; I assume they’d have a German speaking notary since Fribourg is a bilingual canton, but you can check that with them. Our guy was very good, going through each paragraph of the contract in English so we understood exactly what each meant.
And don’t be afraid to ask for changes/additions to said contract. We had a few changes made to ours before we all signed it.
Röstigraben I lived in Fribourg for 2 years, the gemeinde turned it into a nightmare. The most unqualified ppl for the job you can find in Switzerland are concentrated at Fribourg immigration