Have rooms, flatshares or co-living managed in Switzerland

What is specialised room and co-living management?

A room-house or co-living management takes over the full management service catalogue, that is commercial, technical and administrative management, and additionally masters the extra workload that systematically arises with individually let rooms: frequent re-letting, applicant screening and fit within the flatshare, operation of the shared areas and a much higher communication frequency with the residents. The key difference from classic apartment management is not a single item but the frequency: the most expensive activity, re-letting, is not a one-off event per apartment in a room house but a permanent state.

Why classic management often does not fit room houses

In a house with individually let rooms the owner runs not one tenancy per apartment but a multiple of that, plus the operation of the shared areas and daily living together. Under Swiss tenancy law furnished rooms also have a short statutory default notice period of around two weeks (Art. 266e CO), which can be extended by contract or steered through a minimum rental period. Without active steering this favours high turnover, and every tenant change costs time and money (vacancy, cleaning, listings, applicant screening, handover).

What does managing furnished rooms and co-living cost?

For the ongoing management of classic rental properties, fees in Switzerland are market-typical at around 3 to 6 percent of the net target rental income. There is no binding industry tariff, the rate is agreed individually. For furnished rooms, flatshares and co-living there is no published standard tariff. Because the effort arises per room and not per rent, a pure percentage solution is often not appropriate to the effort here. More common and more transparent is an effort-based model consisting of a room-based base fee for ongoing operation, a fee per room change for re-letting and an hourly rate for special work. The letting itself is remunerated separately, market-typical around half a month to one month of rent per re-letting. For rental properties the owner or the management bears the letting costs, not the tenant.

Operator solution for real estate companies and developers

Real estate companies, developers and operators with room or co-living properties often do not look for a classic manager but for an operator solution: someone who runs the entire operational business in a specialised way, reports in a consolidated manner across several locations and onboards new properties as a repeatable process. There are two basic models, and they differ in how risk is shared, not in how serious they are. With a management mandate the owner keeps the tenancies, the vacancy risk and the upside, and BoVita runs the operation for a transparent fee. With a head lease BoVita rents the property itself on a long term and re-lets on its own account, the owner receives a fixed rent known before signing and hands over effort and vacancy risk. BoVita offers both, the head lease only after assessing the property. What neither model contains is a hidden mark-up.

Can owners outsource room letting and operation?

Yes. Owners can outsource room letting and the entire operation: single-room letting and re-letting, applicant screening for creditworthiness and fit, flatshare and conflict management, deposit handling under Swiss tenancy law, accounting and billing, plus ongoing reporting via an owner dashboard. The scope of services ranges from a single property to a portfolio, and a single mandate is also possible.

Legal guardrails in Switzerland

How does the handover work?