Thousands of households affected: Now even the city of Zurich is increasing apartment rents

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Anyone who gets a city apartment in Zurich is lucky: they are significantly cheaper than apartments from private providers. Apartments in the city are so popular that a random generator decides who can come to see them. Otherwise the crowd would be huge.

But now there’s even bad news for those living in council estates in Zurich: their rents are rising. As the City of Zurich confirmed upon Blick’s request, 7,000 households received a corresponding letter this week.

Rent increase under the Christmas tree

The background is the reference interest rate: At the beginning of December, the Federal Housing Office increased the relevant interest rate. Many landlords showed no mercy and sent rent increases to their tenants before Christmas.

The city of Zurich waited for a while before making this decision. Now the die is cast. “In the last 15 years, the reference interest rate has fallen nine times, most recently in 2020. The City of Zurich has passed on all these reductions to its tenants,” writes City of Zurich spokesman Kornel Ringli. to request. Now that the reference interest rate has increased, the rent law still applies. This means rents are increasing. But: “Even with this arrangement, 44 percent of tenants pay the same or lower rent than at the beginning of the lease,” says Ringli.

Pendenzenberg is growing in referee boards

The 7,000 affected households will still be given some grace period; The increased rent will need to be paid for the first time in June. The increase was 3.37 percent. Since the rent increases were sent out, Kornel Ringli has been receiving individual inquiries: “We understand whether individual tenants are concerned about increasing costs in general.”

But the city’s property management team isn’t expecting a flood of conversation. When the rent was last adjusted there were objections only in isolated cases.

This is probably also due to the fact that rents for city properties remain low despite the increase: private landlords have been on a hot rise since the beginning of the year. Many arbitration committees even had to increase their staff due to the multitude of objections.

Source :Blick