so, I've heard swiss law requires you to put 20% down on the value of the house you want to buy.

is it 20% cash, or can this collateral include stocks, bonds, hedge funds, etc?

General rule is 20%. However, there are many ways and possibilities, mostly based on the situation of the individual(s). You should talk to mortgage branches at different banks. Different banks have different bottom line requirements.

Cheers . . .

in general you can use cash, pension fund (2nd , 3rd pillar).
The 20% is not carved in stone. I heard of people asked less.

To give you more examples, you can use funds in your retirement accounts (e.g BVG) :
- as a collateral, where they put a hold on it. The amount they will put a hold on is 20% of the value of the property. However, you have will have to pay interest on the full purchase value, as you did not really provide a down payment, but only a guarantee of the 20%. Your 20% on hold gets the regular pension fund interest.
- you can cash out 20% of your pension fund, pay taxes on it (as you cash it out), and apply it towards 20%. I know UBS back then wanted 20% of the property value.
- I think UBS will value other assets you have and if you chose to pledge them, UBS will count x% of the face value (based on market risk).
- If you have 5% in cash that you can provide as down payment without going into your retirement accounts, then way back then UBS was willing to accept only the 5% in cash as the downpayment.
- I suspect that CS has similar policies.
- Migros Bank back then wanted 25%, instead of 20%, and their interest rate was higher than UBS and CS.
- Kantonal Banks also have interesting offers.

I can only suggest you discuss and negotiate with them a bit to find that line they are not willing to cross. Some of the possibilities they offer is also very good information to look at different types of amortizations and to determine which ones are better than others.

Cheers . . .

Either I was unlucky, or things have tightened. I talked to UBS about purchase of a property valued at 3 x gross salary (ie affordable by swiss standards) and I could show various savings/illiquid investment assets (incl. BVG) valued at more than the property value. They insisted on 10% cash down, the other 10% I could pledge from BVG.

The requirement is a minimum of 20% of the banks valuation of the property - which oddly tends to be exactly what you paid for it.

That 20% can be:

1) Cash
2) Pledged pension assets - Pillar 2/3
3) Pledged funds/stocks/etc

In the case of 3 you have to transfer that pledged assets to the bank, they will then loan you the money at LTV of around 60-70% - and will charge the mortgage rate. It is a win/win for the bank - they pull in new assets (which is a key performance indicator in retail/private banking), they also lower the overall LTV and also earn more fees.

Thank you all for your replies.

What's BVG ?

You can put whatever your bank is ready to acccept as a security or payment. Each and every circumstance is differnet; go and ask a couple of banks what they are ready to do with what you can offer.