Who own the real-estate in Switzerland? Is it super wealth individuals, foreign investors, pension companies, banks, normal people?

Does anyone have a rough overview of who owns the real-estate. Seems very un-affordable for normal people. Was considering buying a house and trying to understand how the swiss housing market works.

I own a house but then again, I’m far from normal.

We own an apartment AND a rustico.

Only country I've lived in where I could afford to buy something.

Tom

Well the Bank, my wife and I own a small chunk of CH. Regretfully we are not equal partners.

Depends how you define normal. We own 2.

Ownership rate will vary across the country. In Zurich city it will be at around 10%, if you go to Zentral Schweiz, will go up to well above 50%...

Does your wife know that?

Roughly 50% is owned by individuals, 30% pension funds / assets managers and remaining 20% is made up of municipal, kanton and cooperatives.

The largest owner of Swiss real estate is insurer Swiss Life...

I think the joke was that the bank owns most the house

You can run some numbers on your own to get an idea but here is my take.

Let's take a CHF 1m property, which doesn't really buy anything decent in Zurich. 20% deposit (200k), a 15% amortizing mortgage (150k) and a 65% interest only mortgage (650k). I can get financing for 1% with most banks.

Your annual cashflows are: (i) interest of 8k on the 2 mortgages, (ii) home maintenance costs of 1% of the purchase price so 10k, (iii) 1% amortization of the 1st mortgage so 10k. That's total annual cashflows of 28k. Divide that by 12 months and you get 2.3k per month. Most lenders wont allow you to spend more than 1/3rd of pay on housing costs so you need monthly income of 7k.

Now here is the funny part. Apply a 5% interest rate to the above (as per the stress test that banks do) and that monthly number goes up to 5k which means you need a monthly income of 15k to qualify.

When I look at income distributions, I recon that less than 5% of the population would qualify for a mortgage on their own and roughly 20/25% would qualify as a high-earning couple...say a 2-income household where both partners make 8k each per month and have 1/no kids.

https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/en/home....12488554.html

The guy in this documentary owns some of it

Why, are you looking to infiltrate those circles to reduce the risk of having to pay alimony for a child?

Thanks for the link. In contrast to the "can i survive on 120k" posts, it is humbling to watch someone having to shop for a family on a tight budget and avoid buying more than she can afford.

The couple on high wages moaning that they are left with only CHF500 per month really irritated me in comparison. The couple already have a 4th kid on the way and I have a feeling that they are not going to stop there


EDIT- I bet they are on EF too!

As you say, CHF 1m doesn‘t buy much in large parts of Switzerland and particularly not in parts where earning CHF 180k is a relatively common household income.

When we were buying 3 years ago, we considered moving back to Zurich and I remember looking at Europaallee and thinking who the hell a) can afford CHF 2m+ (So by your calculations CHF 360k pa household income) for an apartment and b) is at a life stage where living in a pokey apartment seems like a good idea. And they get more expensive.

Looking on homegate.ch it seems they‘ve all sold though and now it‘s that kind of money to buy in Zurich-West.

I also can‘t quite get my head round who can afford to buy all the CHF 3m to the sky is the limit priced apartments and houses in my neck of the woods.

The only conclusion I‘ve been able to come to is it‘s people who have ridden the property wave over the last 20 years and are using the bank of mum and dad, but generally the Swiss don‘t seem to move very often.

this is the price list i got from europaallee as it was under construction in 2012:

https://i.ibb.co/hf7J9Wq/Screenshot-...2-10-29-53.png

2 years later in 2014, I wrote on facebook: "I looked at buying an apartment in Europaalle, but figured it was not worth it due to low rental yield. I obviously hadn't imagined people would try renting these apartments for 14k a month" that was for a 2 bedroom apartment...

Guessing by the date those were some of the first ones near the HB. In 2017 it was the ones closer to Langstrasse that were being offered. I can’t remember exact prices, but pretty sure it was over CHF 2m for a 2.5 room apartment.

Further to my earlier point, I can‘t understand who could and would pay 14k a month for one. That‘s way beyond a typical expat package housing allowance, probably even for a board member.

yup the prices were for the early ones built near HB. not really looked at the housing market in zurich, but i guess prices and rents kept on going up...

Airbnbs?

Are these income numbers before or after taxes?