You can rail at the government for "putting small businesspeople out of business" but it will do you little good because they do want small business people to go away.

Unlike mortgage interest rates that are governed by specific factors, interest rates in private money are largely influenced by supply and demand as well as other unique factors.

Forclosure simply doesn't exists, since there was only 9 forclosure last year....A simple, basic SFR is over 2,000,000 USD and a good property in a good location is over 10,000,000 USD so It's completly out of reach for me and I'm looking at condos.For condos, the median price is 10000 CHF per square meter, to translate it's 1000 USD per sq ft and it's a median price, condos near the lake or in the city center are two or tree times more expensive.With theses prices, the 2% rules is completly impossible to obtain since the rent for a small condo of 300 sq ft is around 1500 USD (0.5%) per month and a 1000 sq ft condo is arround 4000 USD per month (0.4%).The only good thing is the interest rate who is incredibly low at 2.79% for 15 years for a fixed rate for exemple, another "strange" local particularity is that in Switzerland we don't really pay our mortages, ever : for fiscal reasons it's a lot more interesting to have a debt on our house so we pay a small interest rate and have a big tax reduction.Most of the experts agree that Geneva face a housing bubble, the problem is that 10 years ago they where saying that too and prices have rised by 100% since... and there is still a severe house shortage and very low credits costs so I don't really see how things could really change...I tried to look in other part of Switzerland, the price is lower but the rent goes down too so the ratio isn't really better...One possiblity would be to invest in France since the border is so close and the price theres are 40% lower and there is a lot of government helps for investors like 19% of your money back on a new house purchase if you keep a gov fixed (read low) rent for 9 years.What would you do in my situation ?

Basing ones views on the worst and least likely scenarios, is like government legislating and gearing bureaucracies toward the lowest common denominator, or the reverse discrimination brought by Affirmative Action.

I've seen lots in the 6 figure ranges as well, patio, decks, pools, garages, nice lawns, club house even a golf course, again, location and amenities, not the can on wheels.As personal property they usually won't generate the tax base of conventional housing, yet they use and consume public services just as a conventional home, so at the government side, they are or can be a drag on services.

Bill Gulley John Jackson Bill Walston, all chime in here.What @Bill Gulley knows is alot about many things, especially liability issues with the US Government.

That's what local government is there for, to provide 'services' to the citizens, and protect their health, etc.

It's government at it's best to borrow that money as long as they can and not perform.

Along with all of that is the political aspects, and the overspending of local governments (in California anyway) All of those things impact local markets.

Terry your thought seems very rational but when I was going thru this process and went to two different DMV office's and spoke to probably 6-7 different government workers, nobody came up with this solution for me.