Buying real estate from private sellers - price negotiation & procedure

Notarial purchase. These agreements / A4 papers etc. are worthless

We had the same situation. We deducted a fictitious rent from the purchase price and then set the handover on a date in the future. If you cannot pay the installments and the apartment at the same time, it is also possible to buy, with monthly payments from the current owner to you and a fixed handover date in the future.

We had also notarized the purchase of the apartment eight months before the previous owners moved out. The contract included a time frame in which they had to move out. We had a clause stating that the purchase price would only be due upon their moving out.

It is important not to push your own limits out of emotion. So first establish a target range and adjust the strategy. Currently, there is not much room for negotiation – for most properties, the number of interested parties is large. In the family, we have sold 2 houses in the last 3 years, and we did not have to engage in any price negotiations.

Notarial purchase. These agreements / A4 slips etc. are worth nothing

Before the notary is always the optimum. The OP will know that too.
But what exactly do you do if the sellers now say, "The notary is still too early for us"? After all, it is not yet clear when the current owners will even move out and the question of the inventory is also not settled.
Pressuring the seller into anything will not work given the market situation.

In that case, I would then make a private preliminary contract (there are plenty of templates available online) and make a down payment. Every non-notarized contract is worth nothing at all. Have fun proving it and suing for compensation, but you still won’t have the apartment. Definitely no down payment, the money could be gone. A pre-emptive right doesn’t help either, because then you step into the new purchase contract and price. If in 6 months someone pays 20% more, you can either follow or let it go. Completely circumventing it is also easy with a sale to the children at a very high price and an independent cash gift. Apart from higher notary costs, this has no disadvantages.