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Comment by pjmlp | Hacker News Reader

I only know something like Schufa here in Germany, never needed something like that in Portugal, UK, France, Switzerland.

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In Switzerland for a proper lease, you likely need to provide a (clean) record from the debt collection register. But it's a government run agency, as it should. No score. Debt collectors can file claims a bit too easily and there are errors, but you can also challenge them easily.

Back when I was actually living there, 2003 - 2004, it was only the painful interview process as if applying for a job, but I didn't had to provide anything else.

Debt collection records were definitely a thing 20 years ago.

But it sounds like you were dealing with an individual landlord, that's kinda rare. They might be more willing to use common sense and not ask useless documents from someone who just arrived in the country.

On the other hand, big property management companies will typically not bother with an application that doesn't tick all the boxes.

Being at CERN helped, it wasn't individuals, but it took about three months, and several attempts.

CERN gives you diplomatic status, by law (at least in Geneva) lessors have to be more accommodating indeed.

On the other hand, most landlords and property management companies absolutely hate applications from people who they know are going to leave after a fixed term contract.

Most countries have something allowing liens against property; liens against persons are harder to keep track of (hence things like credit burros spring up).

In the UK, it's usually the landlord (or their agent) doing the background checks on you. And they pay for it.

In Portugal most of times you need to provided an income tax statement which I think servers the same purpose.

Is definitely not the same, schuffa has a complete history of anything financial related to your life, including a credibility score that we don't have any clue how they come up with it.

In the UK at least, credit reports largely happen behind the scenes, and potential landlords etc cannot perform a full credit search. With your permission they can perform a 'soft' search (have you declared bankruptcy or do you have any County Court Judgements) and they may not charge you for doing this.

Further, as of GDPR, you are entitled to all information from the agencies for free. Prior, you could obtain it for a small fee (£2 by post if my memory serves me correctly).

As far as I'm concerned, SCHUFA is basically a scam I am compelled to fall for whenever I want to rent somewhere.

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