Your situation
When a flatshare breaks up
Someone is leaving the shared flat, or everyone is. Before anything else, find out whose name is on the lease, because that answer governs all the others.
A shared flat ends the way it was signed
Flatshares come apart for undramatic reasons. Somebody finishes a degree, takes a post in another canton, or moves in with a partner. The others want to stay, or they do not, and everyone would like the rent to stop being their problem by the end of the month.
What happens next has almost nothing to do with the conversation you had in the kitchen. It depends on the contract signed with the landlord, and specifically on which names appear on it. Two flats that look identical from the inside can be in entirely different legal positions. Read the first page of the lease before you do anything else.
Case one: everyone is named on the lease
Where all the flatmates signed, all of them are tenants of the landlord together. The obligations bind them as a group: the rent is owed for the flat, not split into private shares the landlord has to chase separately, and the same goes for its condition at the end.
The consequence for a single departure is the one people find surprising. You cannot simply remove your own name and leave the others in place, because that changes the contract the landlord agreed to. A departure of that kind normally requires the landlord's agreement and, in practice, a written addendum recording who is in and who is out from a given date. What that addendum must contain, and whether a replacement flatmate has to be approved at the same time, depends on your contract. Put the question to the managing agent in writing rather than settling it among yourselves.
Where everyone is leaving, the route is the ordinary one: the flat is handed over to a successor, or the notice runs to its term.
Case two: one name on the lease, the others sublet
The other common arrangement is that one person holds the lease and the others live there under a sublet, whether or not anybody used that word. The landlord then has one tenant: the lease holder pays the rent, answers for the state of the flat, and is the person the managing agent contacts about anything at all.
That cuts both ways. A subletting flatmate who leaves owes notice to the lease holder rather than to the landlord. The lease holder who leaves takes the whole structure with them, because the sublets exist only for as long as the main lease does. Subletting also generally requires the landlord's consent, and the conditions attached are worth knowing beforehand: our guide tosubletting rules in Switzerlandsets out what the law expects, andsubletting your flat in Geneva covers how we handle it.
What to establish before anyone gives notice
- Which names appear on the lease, and from what date each of them was added.
- Whether the contract says anything about changes of tenant or about subletting.
- Whether the deposit was paid by one person or by several, and in whose name it is held.
- What the landlord requires in order to accept a change, asked and answered in writing.
Once those four points are settled, the choice between replacing one flatmate and handing over the lease entirely becomes obvious. Guessing is how flatshares end up with two people liable for a flat neither of them lives in.
Where we come in
When the whole flat is being given up, we run the lease takeover from end to end: the file, the professional photographs, the listing on the Geneva property portals, the sorting and verification of applications, the viewings, the presentation of qualified candidates, and the follow-through to the exit inventory. UnderArticle 264 of the Swiss Code of Obligations, presenting a solvent successor willing to take over on the existing terms is what releases the outgoing tenants, so the quality of that candidate decides everything. One who fails the solvency check restarts the procedure with a fresh month of notice, and in a flatshare that month is charged to everyone.
When only one person is leaving, we help you work out what the contract allows, find a replacement who will survive the landlord's checks, and prepare the file for the managing agent. Either way, start on the lease takeover page: tell us who is on the lease and who is leaving, and we will tell you which route your flat is on.
No fee for the outgoing tenant when we find the successor, in exchange for two weeks of exclusivity. In a shared flat, that holds for each of you. See is it really free for the full terms.
Hand over your lease with a team that does it every week
Tell us about your flat and your move-out date. We handle your file within 24 hours. When we find your incoming tenant, the service costs you nothing.