I rent a 4 bed house in Baden for about 2x the cost of the mortgage on my London house in Enfield (it's not sold yet). The distance to Zurich central is about the same (London is very large, Baden / Zug / Winterthur would be on the edges of Greater London if you overlayed it), but the train is faster for several reasons: geography (mountains) encourages locally dense living, but the overall density is lower, so my house and work offices are closer to stations at either end.
Rental yields are capped in Switzerland, and in practice Zurich rents are not at the market clearing level - renting is actually a beauty contest between applicants. Great apartments are restricted by availability instead of rent level, but even considering that, the rent levels are higher than London, excluding central London - but I lived in London for 14 years, and I'd never really consider living centrally.
I'll reserve judgement on restaurants until post-Covid permits more eating out. I've ordered deliveries from about 20 different places (mostly Zurich, some Baden) and eaten out in three different places. I have a number of preliminary conclusions (Swiss don't know how to make a good burger, Indian restaurant portions are too large and too expensive, there are far too many pizza places and the highest rated ones have been very mediocre, and the most reliably good food has had a high cheese content, whether it's fondue or cordon bleu) but I'll pass deeper judgement later.
Good wine is easy to find though, and my house has a wine cellar.
Rental yields are capped in Switzerland, and in practice Zurich rents are not at the market clearing level - renting is actually a beauty contest between applicants. Great apartments are restricted by availability instead of rent level, but even considering that, the rent levels are higher than London, excluding central London - but I lived in London for 14 years, and I'd never really consider living centrally.
I'll reserve judgement on restaurants until post-Covid permits more eating out. I've ordered deliveries from about 20 different places (mostly Zurich, some Baden) and eaten out in three different places. I have a number of preliminary conclusions (Swiss don't know how to make a good burger, Indian restaurant portions are too large and too expensive, there are far too many pizza places and the highest rated ones have been very mediocre, and the most reliably good food has had a high cheese content, whether it's fondue or cordon bleu) but I'll pass deeper judgement later.
Good wine is easy to find though, and my house has a wine cellar.