And that for affordability calculations only 1% pa amortisation is taken into consideration. In a market where there is an obligation to fully amortise the mortgage (over 25-40 years) the affordability levels will be lower.

Another reason I suspect to be behind the increase is the buoyant stock market over the last few years. This will have allowed people to amass a bigger deposit far more quickly than just tucking away savings in a bank account or pulling it from their pension.

20 x annual rent is long gone in Germany, and also the parts of Italy I know.

Somewhere I read recently that in Zurich some pension funds are paying up to 70 years as they have caps on equity share of portfolio and nowhere else to go.

Utterly disastrous policy for everyone concerned. I still marvel at the general disaster that is Swiss pensions.

Thats beyond bonkers as a 70 year old building likely would get knocked down in CH as it's cheaper to replace rather than refurbish. Previous 70 year average interest rate would be higher than rent.

Don't take a look at the average pension provision per capita in our home country then or the unfunded public sector pension obligations!

While the pension regulations are arguably too conservative, they were drafted in a time before quantitative easing, where govt bonds had a positive yield and equity returns lower and more volatile. At least Switzerland has had a good few decades of forcing people and their employers to put away *something* for their retirement.