true, BUT… they bear the market risk, the (non-)diversification risk (depending on your allocation of course), the currency risk against the Swiss franc in most cases, etc etc…
buying property, especially your own home, is a different risk ballgame.
Looking at it from a bull market example: these vehicles have appreciated massively (depending on the time of entry) over the last 3-12 years since 2009. Their future improvement is massively not as likely as their past performance was.
Our bank asked us to share the rental contract as they re-evaluate your “Tragbarkeit”; I do not know whether sharing the amount of the rental would have been legally enough. A copy of the deposit was also required.
Banks can eventually ask you to amortize directly, as in case of rental they do not have any security any more (3a is not a “Zusatzsicherheit” any more).
I do not know how our bank would have reacted in case of short term rental like Airbnb. Probably more direct amortization.
Thanks all, very interesting. To be honest it makes sense that if for instance you go out of the country and want to rent your place, indirect amortisation will no longer work so probably you need to switch to direct amortisation but what about all the money you have already pledged? Do you believe that they will make you withdraw it and apply it against the loan?
In my case this would be a nightmare tax wise as it is a significant amount and despite being broken down to several 3a accounts, i guess they need to be withdrawn at the same time…(plus all the opportunity cost of not having these funds invested anymore but rather reducing your mortgage)…
once the property is not your primary residence any more, the pledge on your 3a accounts is lifted (so you are free to transfer them to VIAC 
). As mentioned above, the bank will need an additionnal security (“Zusatzsicherheit”) so will ask you to make a direct amortization in cash, or eventually to block a certain amount of money on an account.
I guess the banks can ask you to amortize up to 35% in total, it also depends on the re-evaluation of the property value. We were never requested to amortize more than 25% so far. It might depend on your global financial situation (stable jobs, available cash, investments etc… are certainly factors that matter)
do not know how it works if you just temporarily go out of the country; but if the bank notices that your primary residence address has changed, they will re-assess your financial situation (Tragbarkeit) considering that your property is a rental one.
AFAIK this applies only to the 2nd pillar, not 3rd.
Just don’t do like me who pledged the (cash) 3rd pillars which return 0.3% while the mortgage costs 0.9% or so.
After pledging I can only invest them up to 40% stocks for something like 0.9% TER. I should do something about this issue actually, I had even forgotten…
Well, I hope you are right. But I think the expectation is that in the long term housing prices should on average only increase as much as inflation.
Hmmm. With the population increasing faster than CH surface, I think that housing prices will outpace inflation.
With regards to inflations, not sure whether we’re moving to an economy with increased inflation – and very, very curious if SNB will dare to increase interests above zero anytime soon if we do…
And how do you know that will be the case in 20 years from now? Likely, yes, but I wouldn’t take it for granted.
well are you sure? our bank was very clear, the pledge on our 3rd pilars will be lifted once the property is rented.
Maybe we are talking about two different things. What I know is that if you pledge your second pillar then you can’t rent the house out. If you instead pledged the 3rd one, you can. This is what I was told when I bought a few years back anyway.
Ok
To me it makes sense that the pledging principles apply equally to 2nd and 3rd pilars.
Any bankers or rental investors here (= is our bank bullshitting us ? )?
Probably more accurate to say prices can’t keep increasing more than incomes as opposed to inflation
If US and other countries get inflation and increase rates, we might start to see rate increases in CH rates this way because it could create leeway for SNB to increase rates - like they would otherwise have done already to control the frothy property market -without driving up the franc
To be fair here, also my bank did not mention anything like that when I got the mortgage that is why I asked you before (but maybe it was buried down in some fine prints)…
I guess there is a difference between 2/3rd pillar in the sense that the 3rd pillar is not mandatory so nobody can accuse you of jeopardising your pension to speculate on a rental property…you could easily not have deposited the 3rd pillar money in the first place…