We need an independent Swiss surveyor
Posted in Switzerland forum 10 Apr 2010, 17:55
Seeking advice please. We bought an apartment in Valais Switzerland three years ago and love our stays there. The chalet was built in the late 1970's and is privately owned comprising 12 flats with only 2 resident owners as far as we can tell.
A Swiss managing agent runs our chalet and awards the various (all shockingly expensive even compared to central-London prices) building and repair/decorating jobs to his tight coterie of local suppliers.
We couldn't attend this years AGM so sent someone local along as these meetings tend to be routine. But not this year. Out of the blue there was a vote to raise £150k over and above the annual bills and service charges for 'urgent building work'. This wasn't tabled in any detail on the agenda, and managing agent had the casting vote which went through 5:4. As a result he has just hit us with a bill for £18k as our contribution to ' mending the roof' - the entire bill being nearly £82k! We have one of two penthouse flats and there are no leaks that we know of. We are extremely suspicious of his tactics and suspect he's marking up the work and taking a cut. We insist upon 3 competitive quotes but believe these are pre-agreed between his mates as he rotates jobs around the many chalets he controls in our resort.
Our apartment is on of the largest in the chalet so our contribution is proportionally the most.
One of the joys of buying somewhere in Switzerland is that there is very little of the ghastly conveyancing red tape we struggle with in the UK - and that includes surveyors. The Swiss have a sensible approach to surveyors - ''we Swiss invented insurance and if the place falls down it's covered'' so surveyors don't really exist to our knowledge.
To be able to independently challenge the managing agent's outrageous roofing quote we need to find a qualified Swiss surveyor who is able to act independently of any of the local 'mafia' - a foreign surveyor just wouldn't be credible to our neighbours.
Does anyone have any ideas? Many thanks, Mary