Comment by lostmsu
1 month ago
As a well off person your most significant purchase is going to be a house, and in Seattle they are 3x cheaper.
I just left Seattle Greater Area and my 350sqm admittedly old house + a small ADU with an outdoor pool went for $2M (at the moment it was a downturn, so maybe $2.5M tops now). What can you get for that money in Greater Zurich Area? A 100sqm flat?
In the Zurich Greater Area, you can get this for example: https://www.immoscout24.ch/buy/4002631314. Keep in mind that in most of Europe, real estate ads show the living space, i.e. surface net of walls, corridors, closets, cupboards, etc... whereas in US/Canada it's the gross surface. Those 350sqm are prolly 280 "livable". So if you're willing to live outside the Zurich city core, prices are comparable to Seattle but construction quality is way higher.
Also, most mortgages in Switzerland are very peculiar: you pay 20% down, but then you don't ever pay off the principal, only interest on the remaining 80% which is owned in perpetuity by the bank. The interest rates are kept very low and the currency quite stable, because most of the citizens rely on it. So your monthly interest could be 400-500 CHF, and you invest the rest however you prefer.
This is incomparable. Here's a friend's house from the neighborhood: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2845-140th-Ave-NE-Bellevu...
much larger, much closer to everything, almost an acre of land
How long was the commute from your place?
The rail network in and around Zurich is reliable and punctual, so you can live anywhere along that 30km long lake and still have your commute be 30-40m, without needing to search for a parking spot and whatnot.
I experienced this myself when I was briefly commutung from Pfäffikon(SZ).
Commute to where? 15 minutes walking from Microsoft main campus and 10 minutes driving from a new Facebook campus. 10 minutes driving to a good daycare.