Expatriates: General Information

The best overview on available houses and appartments you get on:

homegate - Das Immobilienportal

On this protal you can search by region, size and price in a pretty convenient way. Often news paper ads are linked with homegate as well, so that you get a great overview. Most rentals occur via real estate management companies. With them it is some times hard to get a personal contact. When you inspect an offered flat the management company usually distributes forms, on which you can state your interest and leave your personal data. Based on this doacument the company decides who the new tennat shall be.

In the major cities of Switzerland the demand for apartments, in particular, smaller apartments, is very high. The renter tries to concentrate all interested parties to one or two time slots, when they can have a look at the apartment. If you can not participate in these, you practivally have nor chance to rent the flat. Due to the large nummber of potential tennants, such events are very crowded. You can feel lucky, if a housing is offered by a private landlord. In this case you may have a better chance to convince the renter, that you are the right tenannt to choose.

In contrary to Germany you find in Switzerland von differentiation between "public" and "private" health insurances. There are only independant insurance companies. many of those had been "Betriebskrankenkassen" before. These were insurances founded by larger companies for their own employees. All of them have to offer a base contract, that contains a basic set of benefits, given by law. That means, within this base contract the insurance campanies do not destinguish from each other by the granted benefits, but may be by friendlyness of their personnel, fast reaction time in reimbursement or other general services. The insurance fees can vary depending on the flexibility you like to achieve in choosing medical doctors. The highes fees you have to pay, if you want to go to any doctor you choose. It gets cheaper when you limit yourself to first going in to a specific health center or to a certain medical doctor ("Hausarzt").

A comparison on the different fees and offers of health insurance companies sou find on:
Comparis - Preisvergleich Schweiz.

Our personal favorit for the basic health insurance is for the time being:
Sumiswalder Krankenkasse.