I've been living in Switzerland for almost 8 years now, I'm originally from Canada. Back in Canada, my family owned our house and 99% of the people I knew growing up, their families also owned their houses. Here in Switzerland it's a different story. I know one person who owns their own place, everyone else rents. I think it's a combination of factors but the biggest one in my opinion is a 20% down payment is required for purchasing a home and the high cost of real estate here. For example, an 1180 square foot apartment in Bern in a decent but not great location was listed at 950,000 CHF which is 1,000,000 USD at current exchange rates. So you need 200k down for that apartment, if you want to start looking at detached houses you're starting at 1.5 mil with a corresponding 300k down payment. 300k is a shitload of money, especially for a fresh university grad just starting out in the working world who are presumably the people who would be buying the "entry" level houses. The city I live in isn't even among the most expensive here, Zürich and Geneva are on a whole other level.
Funny thing is though, no one seems to really care, renting is just normal for people here. It was a bit of a culture shock for me coming from Canada where so many people owned their own homes. My father used to like to say that renting was just paying some other guys mortgage, why not pay your own and build some equity. Perhaps the era of home ownership being so widespread in North America is coming to an end. You're getting to the stupid high prices like over here, and one more housing bubble bursting might just lead to 20% down being required there too. Will be interesting to see hwo things progress over the next few years in that respect.
