Affordable homeownership: Buy or pre-fabricated house?

What do suitable existing buildings cost with you? Or condominiums?

In the OWL district, we are currently looking for properties in need of minor renovations up to 160,000 EUR. There were also some around 100,000 EUR, but the location was not very nice - rather unpleasant.

And these would be houses with a high need for renovation or ones you can move into right away with a bit of paint and a new toilet seat?

Talk to your bank specifically. I know from good acquaintances (2 lawyers, but 1x public prosecutor, 1x freelance lawyer) that the bank basically only used the salary of the tenured public prosecutor for the loan calculation; the freelance lawyer's income was so heavily cut and down-calculated that it hardly mattered in the end, that was in 2016. Of course, your bank might see it differently...my father back then (over 20 years ago) did not get a mortgage at all despite several years of stable self-employment (my employed mother's income was too low).

The equity is of course extremely low, we had more ourselves even after graduation (we financed 100% because we had just finished our studies shortly before, but at least we could cover the incidental purchase costs and a few things that the bank didn’t want to finance ourselves); otherwise it wouldn’t have been possible and that was still over €30,000.

Just write concretely what, for example, your wife earns. With a €700 installment... it depends on the house. My best friend and her husband bought a cheap house in the countryside that was in good condition for only about €130,000, they put about €40,000 of equity into it. They pay about €600/month. Plus of course the incidental purchase costs, which they also paid themselves.

No equity, therefore no purchase/construction. I would not consider it with less than 50,000 equity.

My partner's net income is 2,200 EUR, mine is about +-5,000 EUR. Current fixed costs amount to about 2,400 EUR (including rent). I have just had some larger expenses, which is why the equity is now so low. It has also only been recently that things with the neighbors have been getting worse and are now really unbearable. Hence the quickly desired move or, as I find a better alternative, the house purchase.

As long as special repayments are possible, a long term is also fine with us. The reason is that we naturally want to "live" alongside rather than paying every cent for the house over 16 years. For example, the parents of my partner have a nice single-family home in a pleasant residential area but only pay 540 EUR monthly (term 30 years).