Avoiding vacancy: what an empty month costs and how to re-let quickly

Why a 1.0 percent vacancy rate works for you

The Switzerland-wide vacancy rate stood at around 1.0 percent as at 1 June 2025 (Federal Statistical Office). The rule of thumb in housing-market statistics is that a market below around 1.5 percent is tight, because tenants searching then have almost no fall-back options.

For you as an owner that has two sides. One works in your favour: a well-laid-out, correctly priced apartment in a good location will find a successor tenant when the process is sound. An empty month is rarely unavoidable in this environment.

The other side is the trap: a tight market does not forgive sluggishness, it just punishes it differently. Instead of finding no tenant at all, you find one too slowly. Or you take the first applicant under time pressure and collect the problem twelve months later as the next notice of termination. Scarcity is not a buffer against poor processes. It is an advantage you can squander.

What an empty month really costs, not just the gross rent

Most owners calculate vacancy too narrowly, because they see only the obvious figure: one missed monthly rent. The real loss has two parts.

The first part is the rent foregone per empty month, and it is permanent. A rent not earned in June you will never recover. It is gone, not deferred.

The second, often overlooked part arises with every changeover, even without a single vacant day: placing listings, screening and answering enquiries, coordinating and conducting viewings, vetting applicants (debt register extract, pay slips, references), drawing up the tenancy agreement, organising the final clean, handover with protocol on move-out and move-in. Market rates for this work are typically around one to one-and-a-half net monthly rents per changeover, depending on the rent level and any refurbishment needed. That is a rule of thumb, not a law of nature. With professional organisation, this outlay can be substantially reduced.

The most honest way to put a number on your own vacancy is not borrowed averages but your own figures. Enter your monthly rent and expected vacancy period into the returns calculator and move the vacancy slider. You will immediately see what two empty months do to your net return over ten years, cumulated.

Re-letting begins on the day of notice, not the day of move-out

This is the biggest, most frequently wasted advantage. Many owners wait: the notice of termination arrives, they file it, and a few weeks before move-out they start placing the listing. In doing so they give up exactly the weeks that determine whether the handover is seamless.

For apartments, the statutory notice period is three months, terminable on the customary local dates or, if there is no local custom, at the end of a three-month tenancy period (Art. 266c CO). Three months is enough time to find a successor tenant who takes over without a gap, if you use them. The professional reflex is therefore: place the listing as soon as the notice arrives in the letterbox, not only once the apartment is vacant.

This requires an insight some owners are reluctant to accept: you are marketing an occupied apartment. Viewings take place while the departing tenant is still living there. This is covered by law: the tenant must tolerate viewings for re-letting purposes within reasonable limits (Art. 257h para. 2 CO), with timely notice and respect for their privacy. Anyone who has that conversation early gains four to eight weeks of lead time. Those are the exact weeks that separate a seamless handover from an empty month.

Listing and photos: why the first few days determine how long it takes

On the major Swiss portals (Homegate, ImmoScout24, Flatfox), a fresh listing appears at the top and then slides down as each new competing listing is added. The attention window is, by experience, short. Failing to use it compellingly extends your letting period by weeks, not days.

Three things determine the hit rate. The photos: prospective tenants decide in seconds whether to click through or scroll on. Bright, daylight photos of a tidy room beat every dark phone snapshot with a skewed horizon and a clothes rack in the picture. That is not vanity, it is the click-through rate, and the click-through rate is your letting speed.

Complete information: missing square footage, no floor, no floor plan, no mention of service charges. Every field filled in pulls in enquiries that an incomplete listing never sees, because serious searchers filter precisely and skip anything incomplete. The rent follows in the next section.

Pricing: why setting it too high is the most expensive route to quick money

The most common self-inflicted vacancy does not come from a bad market but from setting the rent too high. The logic is seductive and wrong: I will try high first, I can always come down.

Run the numbers. Suppose you set the rent five percent above market to test the waters. The listing runs, enquiries remain thin, after six weeks you correct downwards and let in the third month. You have now lost two things: one or two empty months at the full rent, and you end up letting at market price anyway. The premium you wanted to test cost you two monthly rents to land exactly where the market was from the start.

Then there is the law. The initial rent can be challenged by new tenants within 30 days of taking possession at the conciliation authority as abusive, notably where it is substantially above the predecessor tenant's rent (Art. 270 CO). In several cantons with housing shortages, such as Zurich, an official form is also required showing the predecessor rent. The market-rate initial rent lets faster and withstands scrutiny at the conciliation authority. The ambitious one does neither.

The applicant pool: why the fastest successor often already knows you

The biggest difference between an empty month and a seamless changeover is often not the better listing but the fact that the next tenant is already known before the listing even goes online.

Anyone who lets regularly inevitably accumulates more qualified prospects than they have apartments. At every viewing there are second and third choices: solvent, agreeable applicants who did not get the unit this time. Someone who lets only once every few years forgets them and starts from zero each time. Someone who lets professionally maintains a short list of pre-qualified searchers, with known budget, preferred move-in date and checked creditworthiness. When an apartment becomes available, the first call goes to that list, not to the portal.

Instead of the cycle of listing, waiting, screening, viewing, checking, deciding, which easily consumes four to six weeks, a maintained list shortens the path to calling, viewing, contract. This is exactly why a management firm that is constantly in the market lets faster than the owner who has to gear up every few years. From our own room operation we know how much such a standing pool is worth when it counts.

The changeover itself: where days are lost that nobody planned for

Even when the successor tenant is confirmed, vacancy often arises in the transition because the changeover is poorly timed. This is where the days are lost that appear in no plan.

The typical trap: move-out at end of month, then the final clean, then a tradesperson for the small repair who cannot come for ten days, then handover, then move-in. Each step waits for the previous one, and suddenly three weeks lie between move-out and move-in, even though the new tenant was ready.

The professional reverses the sequence and runs things in parallel. Cleaning and any minor repairs are scheduled before the old tenant leaves. The exit protocol is clean and complete, so there is no subsequent dispute about damage and defects, which otherwise costs days and nerves. Ideally only what is genuinely necessary lies between move-out and move-in: a few days for cleaning and inspection, no weekend standstill because nobody ordered the tradesperson early enough.

Special case, continuous re-letting: renting by the room and co-living

Anyone renting by the room or in a co-living format lives with shorter tenancies and therefore more frequent changeovers. At first glance that sounds like more vacancy risk. In practice it is the opposite, provided the process is sound.

Frequent changeovers force a system that is, in any case, the best protection against vacancy: a permanently maintained applicant pool, practised cleaning and handover processes, a continuously active listing rather than one reinvented every few years. Anyone running continuous re-letting professionally keeps this machinery always warm. The occasional landlord has to restart it every time. The apparent disadvantage of frequent changeovers thus becomes an advantage, because re-letting never starts cold.

More on this in the related guide: Renting by the room and co-living: is it worth it for property owners?

How BoVita makes the empty month the exception

This is exactly where BoVita comes in. As a property management firm that lets every day, we keep ready the things that cost individual owners time: a continuously maintained applicant pool, practised handover processes, professional listings and photography, and re-letting from the day notice is received, not from the day of move-out. This applies to every rental apartment.

We always work on behalf of the owner, with a transparent fee structure rather than hidden markups, and we deliberately keep re-letting costs per changeover below the market norm. For furnished rooms, flatshares and co-living a channel is added that the individual owner practically never reaches: through our specialism we maintain a targeted corporate demand channel through which companies continuously search for housing for employees. When a room becomes available we ask there first, often before the listing even goes online. The gap between two tenancies is not filled reactively but avoided proactively.