Suddenly the credit report was no longer a prerequisite to the mortgage.
But for real. You say you no longer live there, so I'm assuming you left for more opportunities. My wife and I are interested in countries with opportunities for engineers and privacy. Bonus points if there is engineering research opportunities.
If you have the immense luxury of picking your destination, the Netherlands or much of Scandinavia seem to remain the best options.
Not asking polemically, I just have never studied economics and wonder if my intuition here is flawed
Some societies prefer huge risks for huge benefits, in those one (might) need a more detailed credit reports because everything is faster, people accept huge risks and the situation can suddenly change.
Some societies prefer more stability. Lower risks, lower surprises. Less opportunities, everything is slower, people can't even take that many risks, simpler histories will do th trick.
From what I notice though, housing seems to be a problem in both types of societies, irrespective on how credits are given, because there are other things involved (regulation, NIMBY, housing used as value, airbnb, geography, etc).
And anecdotally, despite the aforementioned letter, we got top market rates on our mortgage.
Worth noting that 2008 occurred in part because mortgages were seen as entirely risk-free in aggregate, even as credit reports were already a thing in the US at the time.
As far as I can tell, credit reports are more a tool that lets lenders wring more money out of borrowers in confidence that their competitors will not undercut them, since the borrowers carry their credit reports with them.