In any other country, Philip Skiba, a well-paid analyst working in the finance industry, might not hesitate to buy a home. But in the town where he lives, on the outskirts of Zurich, even the ugly houses, as he describes them, go for millions.

菲利普·斯基巴是在金融行业工作的高薪分析师，如果在其他国家，他可能会毫不犹豫地买房。但在他居住的苏黎世郊区小镇上，即使是他口中的丑房子，也能卖到数百万美元。

Last year, a simple, beige stucco home in his neighborhood went up for sale. The price: 7.5 million Swiss francs, or about $8.3 million.

去年，他家附近一栋简单的米色灰泥房屋挂牌出售。价格为750万瑞士法郎，约合830万美元。

“My first thought was, this is ridiculous, it’s almost an insult,” said Mr. Skiba, 41, who shares a rented apartment with his girlfriend. When the house sold several weeks later, it reinforced for him the reality of homeownership in Switzerland these days. Buying a single-family home anywhere near Zurich is not just a luxury.

“我的第一反应是，这太荒谬了，简直是一种侮辱，”41岁的斯基巴说，他和女朋友合租了一套公寓。几周后，那栋房子卖掉了，这让他更加坚定了如今在瑞士买房的现实——在苏黎世附近的任何地方，购买一套独户住宅，都不仅仅是一种奢侈而已。

“It’s beyond luxury,” Mr. Skiba said. “Two kids, a house, a garden, two cars — I don’t know anybody who has that.”

“这已经超出了奢侈的范畴，”斯基巴说。“两个孩子，一栋房子，一个花园，两辆车——我不知道谁拥有这些。”

Switzerland’s nine million residents are some of the wealthiest people on the planet — and they are mostly renters. Increasingly, even urban professionals here find themselves locked out of the real estate market. The average price for a studio apartment in Zurich is $1.1 million, according to the research company Wüest Partner. On a square-foot basis, Zurich is about 80 percent more expensive than Paris.

瑞士的900万居民是地球上最富有的人群之一，他们大多是租房者。越来越多的城市白领发现自己被挡在房地产市场之外。根据研究公司的数据，苏黎世一套单间公寓的平均价格为110万美元。按每平方英尺计算，苏黎世的房价比巴黎高出约80%。

At a time when young people in places like coastal California, New York and London cannot see a path to buying a home, Switzerland offers the world a glimpse of a post-ownership society. Around 36 percent of the Swiss own their homes or apartments, the lowest rate in the West and well below the 70 percent average in the European unx, and the 67 percent in the United States. While many young Swiss people say they see positives in a lifetime of renting — mostly, avoiding the hassles and commitments of homeownership — at the same time they admit feeling resentful that they don’t have a choice.

在加州、纽约和伦敦等沿海地区的年轻人看不到买房之路的同时，瑞士让世界瞥见了一个后所有权社会。大约36%的瑞士人拥有自己的住房或公寓，这一比例在西方国家中是最低的，远低于欧盟70%和美国67%的平均水平。虽然许多瑞士年轻人说，他们看到了一生租房的好处——主要是避免了买房的麻烦和负担——但同时他们承认，他们对别无选择感到不满。

“I think most people in Switzerland still have a dream about a single-family house and a garden,” said Andreas Weber, 36, who works in Zurich. “It’s just not possible anymore.”

“我想，大多数瑞士人仍然梦想着拥有一栋带花园的独栋住宅，”36岁、在苏黎世工作的的安德烈亚斯·韦伯说。“而这已经不可能了。

Mr. Weber is the managing director of Corefinanz, a mortgage brokerage, but he is a renter himself, living in an apartment a half-hour by train from central Zurich. “I’m not there yet,” he said of buying his own place. The average age of a first-time home buyer in Switzerland is 48, 15 years older than in neighboring France.

韦伯是抵押贷款经纪公司的总经理，但他自己也是租房者，住在距苏黎世市中心半小时火车车程的公寓里。“我还没到那个地步，”他在谈到自己买房时说。瑞士首次购房者的平均年龄为48岁，比邻国法国大15岁。

In the United States and many other countries, homeownership is encouraged by the government and generally considered a rite of passage. In Switzerland, where the terrain is 70 percent mountains and expensive real estate on limited buildable land has been the reality for generations, a lifetime of renting is not considered a personal failure or a shortcoming of the system.

在美国和其他许多国家，拥有住房受到政府的鼓励，通常被视为一种成人仪式。在瑞士，70%的地形是山脉，有限的可建造土地上昂贵的房地产已经成为世代相传的现实，一辈子租房并不被认为是个人的失败或制度的缺点。

“I know many people who would never want to buy,” said Alice Hollenstein, a psychologist who specializes in urban issues. “They just don’t value homeownership. They think it’s old-fashioned.”

“我知道很多人根本不想买房，”专门研究城市问题的心理学家爱丽丝·霍伦斯坦说。“他们就是不重视房屋所有权。他们认为这已经过时了。”

There is also less judging. Swiss renters say they don’t get lectured on the importance of building wealth through homeownership. “The majority rents and it’s not stigmatized at all,” said Christian Hilber, a native of the northern Swiss town of Basel who specializes in real estate at the London School of Economics. “If anything, people say, ‘You own your place? Why?’”

人们在这方面也不会那么苛求。瑞士的租房者说，没有人来告诉他们通过买房积累财富是多么重要。“大多数人都是租房子住，这一点也不丢脸，”来自瑞士北部城市巴塞尔的克里斯蒂安·希尔伯说，他在伦敦经济学院专门研究房地产。“就算有人说起这个话题，也是，‘你自己有房子，为什么？’”

Switzerland has been renter-majority since the end of World War II, and in some ways it has served the nation well. In 2008, when predatory lending and loan defaults plunged the United States into recession, the Swiss economy barely trembled. Switzerland’s financial authorities require scrupulous vetting of borrowers; “subprime” never entered the vocabulary.

自第二次世界大战结束以来，瑞士一直是租客占多数的国家，在某些方面，这对这个国家很有好处。2008年，当掠夺性贷款和贷款违约使美国陷入衰退时，瑞士经济几乎没有受到影响。瑞士金融当局要求对借款人进行严格审查；“次贷”从未在日常生活中出现过。
原创翻译：龙腾网 https://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


But any preference for renting here collides with a stark financial reality: National surveys show that in recent decades, Swiss homeowners have been better off, at least in terms of wealth. The median net worth of a Swiss homeowner in their 30s is six times higher than that of a renter of the same age. And the wealth gap only widens with age. In their 70s, Swiss homeowners are 11 times wealthier than renters their age, according to a study by Ursina Kuhn at the Swiss Foundation for Research in Social Sciences in Lausanne.

但在这里，租房的任何偏好都与严酷的金融现实相冲突：全国调查显示，近几十年来，瑞士的房主状况有所改善，至少在财富方面是这样。瑞士30多岁的房主的净资产中位数是同年龄租房者的6倍。而且贫富差距只会随着年龄的增长而扩大。瑞士洛桑社会科学研究基金会的乌尔西娜·库恩进行的一项研究显示，瑞士70多岁的房主比同龄租房者富裕11倍。

The catch is that in order to become a homeowner, “you need wealth to get more wealth,” as Ms. Kuhn put it.

问题在于，要想成为房主，“你需要财富来获得更多财富，”库恩说。

Martin Hoesli, a professor at the University of Geneva who has studied Swiss homeownership for decades, said that even though the math favors homeownership in the long run, many Swiss cannot afford a down payment, which by law is a minimum of 20 percent of the purchase price. Add to that the 4 percent in transfer costs, and the minimum down payment for the average-priced house in Switzerland — currently $1.4 million, according to Wüest Partner — is $336,000.

日内瓦大学教授马丁·赫斯利对瑞士人的房屋所有权进行了数十年的研究。他说，尽管从长远来看，从数学角度来看，买房更有利，但许多瑞士人还是负担不起首付，按照法律规定，首付至少是购房价格的20%。再加上4%的转让成本，根据Wüest Partner的数据，目前瑞士房屋的平均价格在140万美元，那么最低首付就是33.6万美元。

Many Swiss rely on perpetual refinancing to afford their homes. Switzerland is the land of luxury watches, fine chocolates — and lifelong mortgages. It’s not uncommon for borrowers to extend their loans until their deaths, which is advantageous from a tax perspective because mortgage interest is tax deductible. It also gives a lot of business to Switzerland’s vaunted banking industry.

许多瑞士人依靠永续性重新贷款来买房。瑞士以奢侈腕表、精致巧克力和终身抵押贷款闻名。还贷还到死情况并不罕见，这从纳税的角度讲是有利的，因为抵押贷款利息可以抵税。这种贷款还让瑞士引以为傲的银行业获得了大量业务。

For the visitor driving through this enchanting Alpine countryside, it’s not difficult to understand why housing prices are stratospheric. The centuries-old stone alleyways of cities like Bern and Zurich, intact and untouched by world wars, are living museums. The skyline in Zurich takes in soaring snow-capped mountains. The lake that rims the city is so pristine that bathers sometimes dip into the water directly from the city’s sidewalks and promenades.

对驾车穿过这片阿尔卑斯田园的迷人风光的游客来说，如此高企的房价并不难以理解。在伯恩和苏黎世等城市，有数百年历史的石板路小巷完好无损，未受两场世界大战的影响，堪称活生生的博物馆。苏黎世的天际线是高耸的雪山。环绕城市的湖泊如此清澈，以至于游泳者有时会从城市人行道和步道直接跳入水中。

When Andreas Fuhrer, 43, a particle physicist who works at a bank in risk management, decided to look for a home in Bern, the Swiss capital, he realized he would have to ask his family for help with the down payment. He and his partner, Siwat Chuencharoen, 37, a piano teacher, set out to find a place where Mr. Siwat could practice without bothering neighbors. They visited 15 places and made offers on five. But they were consistently outbid.

43岁的粒子物理学家安德烈亚斯·富勒在一家银行从事风险管理工作。在决定到瑞士首都伯恩购房的时候，他发现自己必须靠家人帮助才能付得起首付。他和他的伴侣、37岁的钢琴老师西瓦·川查伦需要找一处能让西瓦练习钢琴而又不打扰邻居的住所。他们看了15套房，其中五套他们开了价。但总有人出价比他们高。

“You get depressed,” Mr. Fuhrer said. “You walk through the door and you say, ‘This is our dream,’ and then you don’t get it.”

“你会感到很沮丧，”富勒说。“走进大门之后你觉得，‘这是我们的梦想之屋’，但最后却没办法买下来。”

When they found a place they wanted to buy, they went all out. The 2,150-square-foot house, just over the Bern city limits and across the street from railway tracks, was advertised at 1.25 million francs ($1.38 million), but after several rounds of bidding, the couple bought it for 1.52 million francs. In addition to the down payment of 300,000 francs ($332,000), which their families helped pay for, they financed the purchase with three separate loans of eight- 10- and 12-year durations. The debt is structured so that most of what they pay back is interest, not principal. They plan to be paying the mortgages for decades and decades.

在发现了一个想买的房子后，他们倾尽所有。这套面积约200平米的房子就位于刚出伯恩市城区的地方，与铁路隔街相望，广告标价125万法郎（合138万美元），但在多轮竞价后，他们以152万法郎的价格买到了手。除了他们两家人帮忙支付的30万法郎（33.2万美元）首付之外，他们分别还通过三笔为期八年、10年和12年的贷款筹集了资金。这种贷款组合导致他们的大部分还款都是利息而不是本金。他们准备用未来数十年的漫长时间偿还房贷。
原创翻译：龙腾网 https://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


Most people in Mr. Skiba’s 30-person office earn annual salaries of at least 100,000 francs, he said, but only two own their homes. He could afford a house in the countryside outside Zurich. There are places 60 kilometers away that sell for 1.5 million. But he doesn’t want to live that far from his office and friends in the city.

斯基巴说，在他所在30人规模的办公室里，大多数人的年薪至少有10万法郎，但只有两人有自己的房子。他能买得起苏黎世郊外乡间的房子，那些60公里外的住宅售价达到150万法郎。但他不想住得离城市里的办公室和朋友那么远。

“I think owning property is programmed into people’s DNA,” he said. “But renting right now is the only option if you want to live in urban Switzerland.”

“我觉得拥有房产已经被写进了人的DNA里，”他说。“但如果你想住在瑞士的市区，租房是如今唯一的选择。”