Rent a flat without a salary

In places with low vacancy rates like Geneva, I think so. Either that or be prepared to pay over the odds or move to the countryside to places with low rental demand

My understanding is that if you do not have another income than your assets, this are your income in your tax declaration. therefore you can always show the tax declaration summary where is your net and gross incoming

Don’t think they’re substantially easier to pursue per se.

It’s probably just the underlying assumption that Swiss citizens are less likely to leave the country but more likely to have a higher salary/income. Oh, and cultural prejudice.

Less important than income may be wealth.

At CHF 2’000’000 savings and a safe withdrawal rate of 4%, you could withdraw 80’000 a year. Net (ignoring wealth tax for the moment). Not too bad.

Yet with popular investment strategies, only half of that is going to be taxable income (2% average dividend yield * CHF 2’000’000): CHF 40’000 gross. Or less, if you’ve shifted to bonds or other less risky assets. An unimpressive number to a landlord.

If you are one of 10 applicants forget about renting the property. The estate agent just wants an easy life and to earn their commission

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on a slightly related note: what happens if you need to refinance your mortgage in 8-10 yrs, but you have already FIREd (or are between jobs for that matter) and the bank needs to meet your affordability criteria once again for the refinancing despite you having a net worth of say 1.5M?

If you could repay them with cash taken from your assets, but you choose not to, would they take that as a “fair enough” and still give you the money at the current rates, or would you be evicted unless you pay, because you’re current salary now is not enough for their 5% predicament?

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Most banks use an easy calculation like: assets / (80/85 - age) = income. So if you are 50 with 1.5M in assets, that’s 43-50k income.

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Which would mean no loan
 so safer to make a longterm loan and pay the entire debt with your cash then?

Just buy the property that you want to keep till your death before you retire.

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If you pay for real estate with cash in full, you’re settling for max 3% return per year. Let’s say you buy a flat for 1.2 million. Thanks to this, you no longer need to pay the rent of 3000 per month. That’s 3% saved per year. As we know, the stock market promises higher rate of return over the long run. I’d say, if your total wealth is 5m, it’s ok to have 25% of it in real estate. But having over 50% in real estate is, IMO, not enough diversification.

With leverage in the form of a mortgage loan, you can reduce capital needed to, say, 0.4m.

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