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Termination for personal needs: how it works.

Key points at a glance

Landlords who let out property are legally entitled to issue notice of termination on a tenancy on the grounds of personal needs for themselves, for relatives or for in-laws. The applicable notice period will then be three months, based on the next available termination date for the relevant locality.

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When is notice of termination for personal needs formally valid?

Notice of termination is formally correct…

if given in writing

if the form approved by the canton was used

if the notice period was observed. What counts is not the date of the postmark, but whether the tenant receives the notice in good time. Otherwise, the next but one available termination date will apply. If the postal worker cannot hand over the letter in person, the first day of the period allowed for collection will apply

if separate notice of termination is sent to all tenants (in the case of cohabiting partners, spouses and shared accommodation)

An example

A justified and plausible case of personal needs would be when the landlord’s niece needs some cheap accommodation during her studies. Case law recognises that personal needs extend to children, grandchildren, parents, siblings and their various spouses, and also nieces and nephews. A daughter’s boyfriend, for example, would count as a borderline case.

How tenants can protect themselves against improper termination

If there is a suspicion that the landlord is only citing personal needs as a pretext for termination, tenants may contest the termination. This may be the case, for example, if the landlord wants to get rid of the tenant because they have made complaints or if the landlord wants to put the rent up but is not entitled to do so. Termination may be contested within 30 days, following receipt of notice of termination, via the conciliation authority for tenancy matters. The process is free of charge.

Details of your conciliation authority can be found here.

Before this, however, tenants should always ask to be provided with written and, moreover, plausible justification for termination on the grounds of personal needs – assuming the landlord has not provided this already at their own initiative.

The conciliation authority may judge that termination is improper. In cases like these, a moratorium preventing any further notice of termination is imposed, generally for a number of years, and the tenancy continues to run as before.

Alternatively, the authority may also order for the tenancy to be extended – thereby delaying termination. Whether this happens – and the length of any extension – will vary from case to case. It may depend, for example, on whether the tenant is able to find a comparable new apartment or house within the notice period. Account is also taken of how long the tenancy has been running already and how well integrated the tenants are in terms of the locality or district.

Important

In order to prove that attempts to find alternative accommodation have (so far) been unsuccessful, tenants should keep or copy any written applications and rejections in readiness for the conciliation negotiations. If no evidence can be provided of the efforts made to find somewhere, any prospects of success will decline.

On the landlord’s side meanwhile, consideration is given to the urgency of personal needs, i.e. whether the landlord needs the apartment or house from a particular date, e.g. because the university term starts then, someone is returning from abroad, or because the landlord has been given notice of termination on the apartment on this date. Admittedly, emergencies are not the only condition for termination on the grounds of urgent personal needs – this is always conceded when landlords, on financial or other grounds, cannot reasonably be expected to forego using the rented property.

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