You pay for the location and the commute is real: twenty minutes to EPFL on the M1 at best. Right if you want a city rather than a campus, and if the difference in rent is worth an hour a day to you.
Landlords in Lausanne centre ask for the same file as anywhere in the canton: a debt-collection extract, proof of income, and a guarantor who lives in Switzerland. Two of those are impossible before you arrive, which is why flatshares and private landlords are the realistic route from abroad.
Your deposit is capped at three months of net rent — up to CHF 4'200 at the top of the range here — and it is blocked in your own name, not the landlord's. How the deposit works
We co-sign leases so the file gets accepted, and we search the market when our own rooms are full.