The article doesn’t give enough information to prove or disprove anything. So it’s up to everyone to decide if you think the numbers are strong enough to be used for a discussion. I think they are not.
I have fact-checked another article previously. Also, up to everyone to decide if that gives me some credibility.
I can not comment on the experience of other people (although, it’s a bit hard to believe) - but I don’t think this is common. I know people that make 5x as much as me and are “high rank” executives, besides a suit (sometimes bought in Thailand on vacation) you wouldn’t even notice.
But I am sure there are circles where all they do is basically a money show-off circlejerk.
I worded it poorly - a lot of people just consume whatever is left at the end of the month. So if they buy an expensive house, they are forced to not do that (via amortization) that’s one factor why home owners are richer than renters. In most totally objective scenarios, owning is worse than renting in Switzerland, given you invest the downpayment and honestly calculate taxes and maintancne cost of RE.
The term “dead rent” is nonsense from a financial POV - you’re paying rent, yes, but you’re paying someone rent that has a very moderate, even low expected ROI (renting out residential RE isn’t particularly profitable in most parts of Switzerland).
We also own our apartment, and you may have bought it pre Covid or pre 2000, where prices were still moderate and profited from the growth Switzerland had, but for longer time horizons, from a purely financial view, RE is way worse than investing in stocks for example, while carrying similar or even more risks.
It took quite a while to find a municipality where buying is actually cheaper than renting after cost of capital is accounted for - plus to find a property close a deal that was attractive.
Works for us. We’re better off. YMMV.
Nobody said it was better or worse. Nor that you should compare it.
The only reason I bought an appartment is that I was able to finance > 80% of the property. I would have not bought it if I had to put down 100K or 200K+ for it.
When I consider the value of the appartment, it’s a very uncomforably large part of our total assets, only balanced out by leveraged investments. Some people have a house worth 1-1.5M CHF - this amount of money can be enough to sustain an equivalent montly income 60K CHF in perpetuity (4% rule of thumb, don’t wanna go into details).
On 60K you can raise a family with 2 kids in rural Switzerland - or live a very comfortable life as a single/couple (as you wouldn’t need to save). Sure it’s all a matter of priorities, but you’re locking up and committing literal decades of your lifetime into a stupid concrete slob.
Imho many people don’t consider or undervalue renting, because they forget that they’ll have >500K+ in a 1.5M house when they retire - cash one could use much better imho.
I’m not surprised you “don’t wanna go into details”… 
Renting vs owning is a hotly contested subject in personal finance! The rational/numbers-based people will lean towards renting in most circumstances.
But numbers aren’t everything…if I didn’t already own a roof over my head (it’s not in CH) I’d make it a priority to own, but under no circumstances would I call it investing.
I strongly maintain that RE as an investment is a terrible idea, but if you remove the investing lens and call it a large cost that gives you XYZ then it’s fine, in my opinion. But yeah, as in investment it’s lazy, faux risk averse (I agree it’s far more risky than equities), has huge opportunity cost, debt, interest payments…taxes, depreciation, running costs, illiquid. Overall it’s shite compared with equities!
I think you can buy a sensible prperty in Switzerland, but that may mean that you don’t buy for 1.5M but for 750K if you “only” earn 100-150K as a household. And it requires a “boost” in savings after purchase to restore liquidity.
touche, 60K yearly income - or 5K CHF a month
Single family homes and single appartments that is. If you’re an institutional investor that develps parts of a municipality, you can have a very good ROI, because you have all the headache as well 
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It’s clearly clickbait. The fact alone that the number of affected needed to be inflated by using a dubious measure (number of households rather than debtors) demonstrates that.
It’s one main function of brands, that’s what brain image does. Sworn BMW drivers would never drive Audi or Ford, and vice versa.
To some extent, being fan of one particular sports team rather than any other works quite the same. There’s plenty of that stuff going on. You’ll be surprised once your perception is open to it.
IMO the risk inherent to buying RE around here is due to the leverage. That difference goes up in smoke if you similarly leverage your securities.
Just because things don’t suit you and you don’t see the big picture… does not mean it’s a bad idea.
It would expect that there would be a lot of support for it nationwide. Many people get caughtout by not saving enough money to pay their tax bill when it comes due either because the have no idea who to estimate the amount or can’t resist the temptation to spend it.
I doubt this. It can work for lager cities in Switzerland. I don’t see the countryside having any interest in changing the system.
Define many. It’s certainly not the majority of voting people who have financial issues with their tax bills.
If there was a way to borrow like 1M to invest in VWRD and then pay the bank a 1.5% intrest rate over 10y I’d do that without blinking…
IBKR currently charges 0.75-1.5% for CHF margin credit, 1% for 800k of the 1mln you mentioned, total interest is 10.2k for your million. BLKB advertises 1.45% for a Lombardkredit.
But unless the interest paid is less than dividend and interest earned from your portfolio you’ll be classified as professional investor.
I don’t think that’s as clear cut. I have heard many statements claiming to be classified as professional investor, but almost zero actual testimonials of such a classification.
I used this feature to buy my primary residence (the 20% down payment) effectively allowing me to do a 100% leverage investment.
Also, this is not a hard criteria, your whole case has to be that one of a professional investor (in German the word is “gewerbsmässiger Wertschriftenhänlder”, the english translation misses nuance imho). I wasn’t classified as that, despite using margin for years.
They will only classify you as that if you’re a stock trader/day trader, not if you’re using margin to invest in general. See comment above - on the internet, people think somehow Switzerland is like Germany and will tax you the first opportunity they get, whereas we’re lucking out for rich people
Also 1.5% dividend yield is like below average, even VT has more.
Where do I say that this is a, or the, criterion?
I’m sorry, you make it seem like having more deductible margin loan interest automatically flaggs you as a professional trader, when in fact the whole classification is a very risky process for the tax office, they won’t do that lightheartedly - as they can’t just revoke it either - there’s a court case from a dude in Bern where they tried this and the federal court bound them back on it, etc.
The cool thing is: You can just request a binding Steuerruling - so if you plan to realize a large capital gain, just do that before you realize the gain itself 
Interesting, do you have more information on this case?
In fact Kreisschreiben 36 leaves no room for interpretation, there’s no maybe or any conditional wording. Excerpt from 4.3.2, translated by deepl:
If interest on debt and expenses cannot be covered by periodic income but must instead be paid out of capital gains, this can no longer be considered private asset management (ASA 69, 788).
I don’t have the article anymore and I can’t find it, but in that case the tax office classified him as a commercial securities trader (imho this is the correct term not professional investor) when he made some bank, but then, when he had losses the next year, they said “well, you were commercial, but now you lost money, so you’re not commercial anymore ”. He wanted to be classified as that would’ve allowed him to carry forward the losses for 5y or so.