How are notary fees calculated when selling a property?

Before buying a property, you should consider the notary fees when crafting your budget. The biggest part goes to the state as the transfer tax. Their amount, depending on the canton, is a percentage of the property price which you pay for the property. The biggest part is paid to the state treasury by the notary.

Before explaining in detail, what fees you pay upon signing a notary deed (that is why they are called notary fees), you should know there are two types of notaries in Switzerland:

– The « latin » notary is a notary who runs his activity at his own risk and generally in his own office. This type of notaries you can find in the French speaking part of Switzerland: Aargau, Basel, Uri and Ticino.

– The public notary is a notary who is a public official and you can find them in cantons of Zürich and Schaffhausen. The other cantons use both systems.

=> When preparing for the property purchase, first you need to contact a notary active in the canton where the property is located.

Transfer tax and the land register

The notary fees for property purchase vary from one canton to another but their calculation rests largely the same. Its name does not This general term does mean that it covers only the notary remuneration for his services but the overall of costs of the transaction. Part of them corresponds to drawing a notary deed and some of the correspond to the mortgage note if you take a mortage loan (band loan). The amount due to the notary upon signing the contract is 4% of the purchase price of the property. The one that you pay for the mortage note is about 2,5% of the amount of the loan. These are two different things.

These fees are calculated as follows:

• For the sale contract:

– 3% of the purchase price is registration fees called also transfer fees , which are paid by the notary to the state treasury.

– 0,3% of the purchase price are paid for entering the new owner into the land register.

– 0,7% of the purchase price is the remuneration due to the notary for his services and for covering his costs.

• For the mortage note:

When the buyer is granted a loan for buying a property (generally called a mortage loan since the lender, bank, insurance company or pension fund takes out a mortage on the object of the transaction to secure the repayment of the loan), the notary drafts a mortage note. It is a bond issued by the land register and requested by the lender. The costs for drafting the note are of 2,5% of the loan amount and they add to the transaction costs. They are calculated as follows:

– 1,365% of the loan amount correspond to the transfer tax going directly to the state.

– 0,2% of the loan amount is for entering the mortage into the land register and is paid to the land register.

– Less than 1% of the loan amount is the remuneration for the notary for his services and for covering his costs.