Unusual increase in arbitrations due to rent increases
Published: Tuesday, Mar 19th 2024, 13:30
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In the second half of last year, the Federal Housing Office (BWO) recorded an unusually high increase of almost 50 percent in conciliation proceedings compared to the first half of the year. Rent increases were the main reason for the proceedings.
At over a third, these accounted for the largest proportion of the proceedings that have now been settled, as the BWO announced on Tuesday. An agreement was reached in nine out of ten cases. The second most common reason for arbitration proceedings was ordinary contract terminations.
According to the BWO, 21 cantons had more new cases than in the previous semester. In the canton of Basel-Landschaft, the number of new cases doubled and in the canton of Fribourg there was an increase of 141.3 percent. With 6,757 new cases, Zurich recorded a quarter of all new cases in Switzerland.
There was already an increase in proceedings in the first half of 2023 due to the increase in the mortgage reference interest rate on June 2 and December 2.
Together with the new cases, the conciliation authorities had to deal with a total of 35,707 cases in the second half of 2023, more than half of which were concluded. In the majority of the concluded cases, an agreement was reached through a settlement, recognition of the claim or withdrawal of the claim. A quarter of the cases were dealt with by withdrawal, non-admission, irrelevance or referral to an arbitration tribunal.
At the end of 2023, 13,585 cases were still pending. Since this figure was recorded in 2005, there has never been such a high number of pending cases.
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