I'm going to be moving to a new apartment with my wife, this apartment has 3 bedrooms, 1 living room, 2 bathrooms and a kitchen.
I was looking to rent two rooms and keep for us the living room and one of the bedrooms (pretty common to happen in my home country), these are my questions regarding this idea:
1) Is it legal in Switzerland to close off the living room so that it becomes kind of "a private studio" to both me and my wife as we're 2 and we need a bit more space, not allowing for access to the other flat mates?
2) The living room doesn't have a door or a doorframe, can I hire someone to install both or go with another option to have privacy and then just remove what was installed before I move out in the future?
3) Even though the apartment is big it's actually well priced considering the market, so I could easily put two rooms for rent for normal market price and that would cover almost the entire cost of the apartment. (e.g., if the apartment was 1500 chf per month and I rented two rooms for 700 chf each, I would only have an extra 100 chf, but I wouldn't be making a profit) is this a problem?
You need landlord permission (they may request to complete a form for every guest also to tell the police they are living there, or you have to do that yourself). Not sure about point 3), the landlord might have something to say about it, but maybe not. In any case 700 chf for a bedroom without living room is a bit steep so might not even be an issue. Sometimes the landlord does not want permanent dwellers unless they are on the contract, but they might allow airbnb et similia.
Regarding the door, I think you also might need landlord permission (read your contract), although it does not require a building permit so I don't see why not. If you don't get permission you could also install something less fixed (like a folding door) that only requires some drilling.
One of the rules of sublet is that you cannot make any profit. So if you rent the room furnished, you can add a bit, I have done this 2 times and was allowed 5-10% increase. If you do not allow access to kitchen then it's even less.
Whilst this may work in other countries, where eating out is very common and cheap, it's really not ideal here where eating out habits are different and more of a celebration.
Maybe I wasn't too clear on my message, so my question is if it's fine to have the people renting rooms paying almost the entirety of the rent (around 90%), and me just paying 10%, if this means of course that there's no profit?
There will be access to the kitchen, we're only restricting access to the living room, is restricting the living room an issue legally?
You are of course making a profit on the cost of the room as renting 2 bedrooms of a 3 bedrooms apartment for 90% of the rent means they are essentially covering yours. I had understood. If it's a 3 bedroom,.you split 3 ways and add a little if furnished. If you restrict access to living room then should be less rent as splitting 3 ways would mean access to a common area also.
In this case I would think fair is 25% each bedroom you rent and 50% you and your wife. Plus some expenses if room is furnished.
Also you will need to provide the people.you rent to a copy of your lease and I am sure they will not be happy figuring out you are scamming them into essentially paying for your rent. (it may not be your intention but it is what it will feel like to them).
I didn't think of it that way, for me profit meant going above the 100% value of the whole apartment with the flat mates rent (e.g., the apartment being 1000 CHF and me making 1100 CHF with those two rooms).
We were ready to sacrifice some privacy to rent with advantageous conditions, if the conditions are not that good in terms of how much we save then it's not worth sacrificing the privacy as a couple, so if that's indeed the case I might have to just not rent rooms.
They can 100% eat in the kitchen and I'll leave the bigger bathroom to the 2 people renting rooms. Rooms are furnished but they're not big, I don't know the exact square meters.
I have lived in (fully legal) places with only room and kitchen where you could not eat due to lack of space, so it does occur. Also it is still better than some 1.5 room apartments, where there is sometimes a mini-kitchen where cooking is really difficult.
To consider whether or not to grant this permission, many landlords will want to see the written sub-let contract that you propose making with your tenant. The landlord, mostly, must grant permission, but two exclusion criteria are the main tenant (you) would be making a profit (as set out above) the landlord would suffer some disadvantage (e.g. significantly greater wear-and-tear, contravening any rules the building may have about max. number of persons to live there, etc.).
Not first obtaining written permission from the landlord is, by law, a valid reason for the landlord to terminate your rental contract. So if you're going to sub-let (and yes, many people do, but just as a flat-share, and usually not partitioning off the spaces), then be sure to do it fully legally.
You can obtain a standard versions of such sub-let contracts from the tenants' association Mieterverband for the German-speaking areas and ASLOCA for the French and Italian-speaking areas.
As others have said, it is very advisable to join the relevant organisation for your area, anyway, precisely because you do not know how things work here (and good for you, for first asking the question), because rental law is complex, and because members get free legal advice.
If you look from the other side of the table, that would mean you would pay about 100CHF for a room? How is that not a profit? Can you get similar deal on the market?
So you would pay 10% of the rent whilst having 50% of the usable space but don't see that as profit? Ok then.... The law will see this as profit and the people you rent to also,.pretty sure of that in fact we have had such threads here on e people discover that they are essentially paying for the rent of the main tenant.
Given what you write about you guys having "advantegeous conditions" I fail to see how you do not realize you are trying to pull a fast one but ok, benefit of the doubt and all to you.
In OP's defence, he/she started this thread to ask about what is legal and common, here, since they've come from somewhere else where the practice they have in mind is not unusual.
Here in Switzerland, we have a high standard of everyone - typically, but not always - having the "right" to their own room, etc. In some other countries, tenants can rent just a bed and not even a room, and share small spaces, which may be boarded off just as OP is proposing. In some countries it is perfectly legal to "rent to rent", and the landlord doesn't mind at all if the tenants make a profit, since the main tenant essentially then takes on the responsibilities of the landlord.
OP, please take heed of the warnings in this thread, so that if you do try to sub-let a room, you do it right, and don't get evicted. Join the tenants' organisation. Download their standard sub-let contract. Run your whole flat as a shared space, each person with their own bedroom, but full access to all the other spaces (bathroom, kitchen and living-room). Charge a rent that is in fair proportion of the main rent. Make a contract with your flat-mate, show that to the landlord to get permission in writing, in advance. That's the usual way, here.
Sounds nice and fair until you consider the people renting the rooms have not paid the proportional part of 2-3 months of rent as deposit in this schema. Also, that the landlord doesn't care about subrenting. The one signing the rental contract is the only liable one.
If people think it's an scam, they are free to complain in EF about how hard is to find a place to live. Places like the one OP describes provide temporary housing to newcomers while they figure out their next steps. No worries about finding a place to live, reading contracts in new language, insurance, etc. During a few months it's an expensive but convenient arrangement. Of course, staying there beyond the trial period of a job with indeterminate contract would be dumb.
Back to OP, think about convenience. Higher profit means there will be a high rotation of people subrenting. It all depends on the landlord how many times wants to deal with people coming in and out. Charging a bit less will motivate subrenters to stay longer.
I appreciate everyone's help but this was definitely the answer I was looking for, I'm not trying to scam anyone, as explained here usually the main tenant has more responsibility over the apartment and takes care of anything that happens, the landlord just happily receives rent at the end of the month (which is of course different in Switzerland).
Thank you for your detailed answer, can you also tell me how extra bills are separated here then? Even though I would be paying way less in my mind originally, I was going to pay the extra bills always myself (internet, TV, heating, the gemeinde trash bags etc) and clean the common areas in the apartment, how do you organize all that in an apartment in Switzerland?
And the furnished rooms topic, that would mean that in a 3 bedroom apartment where rent was 1000 CHF (it isn't but let's use that number for this exercise), without furniture normally people would be paying 33,33% of the rent if we're dividing by 3 people, but with furniture that could go up to 40% for instance then for the sub tenants?
I guess this opens a few more questions:
1) How do flat mates share a living room? Do you take turns on who's going to use it or is it a different system?
2) As the main tenant am I "obliged" to buy furniture for that living room if it's not furnished?
3) Who cleans the common areas and when? Do you use like a rotation system that goes by everyone? Or can I propose charging an extra fee to clean the common areas always myself like twice per week?
That's also a very informative answer and that's true, I paid the amount equivalent to 3 rents + the actual rent and I'm not making people subrenting paying me 3 rents of their rooms, I think people don't account for that.
Considering the scenario I've described, what would you think is an amount that's within reason and not seen as me scamming people if I'm renting 2 rooms and there's still me and my wife? Let's do that exercise with a 1000 CHF monthly rent just to keep it consistent with the exercise I've done above.
I guess that what I understood 100% so far is that closing off the living room just shouldn't happen so I'll have to just pick one of the 3 bedrooms for us.