What your flat is allowed to yield: the federal government redefines permissible returns
Anyone who lets a flat sooner or later asks the same question: how much may the rent actually yield before it counts as abusive? For decades, the law has only partly answered it. Article 269 of the Code of Obligations speaks of an excessive return but leaves the definition largely to the Federal Supreme Court. The result is a body of practice that has grown case by case and is barely comprehensible to non-lawyers. The Federal Council wants to change that. On 25 February 2026 it opened a consultation on an amendment to the Ordinance on the Renting and Leasing of Residential and Commercial Premises, which ran until 5 June 2026. For owners of investment properties this is not a legal footnote but a proposal that feeds directly into their own calculations.