> Few years ago in Holland it was something like 100k salary == mortgage for 500k house. No downpayment, 2k monthly.

Would it be wrong to think that the borrower would repay a potential downpayment a few times over to the bank?

How much smaller that 2k mortgage payment would be with a 20% downpayment? And how much larger the share going towards the mortgage body would be?

If only the borrower's comp was just big enough to let them save for that downpayment.

Don't know about you, but to me it sounds almost as if the system was rigged against the worker, to redistribute wealth away from them and into the hands of employers and bankers.