Construction costs are currently skyrocketing

Since the swap is at 1.6, rather 2.6 percent is possible. The trend is still downward. Therefore, I would not conclude over 2 percent yet.

Prices are currently falling almost everywhere. Somehow they don't seem to have received your memo. ;)

Yes, expressed incorrectly, they are falling but not to the actual value. Just last week a neighbor experienced built in 2014 with land and additional costs 400,000 euros and now for 780,000.

Define the actual value. If you mean the construction costs by that... your neighbor certainly won't be able to build for 400k today.

We actually signed our house purchase at the notary yesterday. This time the sellers did not back out anymore. Our loan conditions (inquiry was in May) are still slightly below the current rates, so I am satisfied :-) But really crazy with the interest rate fluctuations. I am glad that I no longer have to worry about financing.

It will remain a mystery to me forever why (small) financial advisors and the like believe they can predict fundamental economic variables better than the market, or why one should trust their predictions.

No one claimed to believe they are right. I don't even know how you can read such nonsense out of my post. I even mentioned that you can never really predict where interest rates are headed. Let the Chinese guy stir up the Taiwan issue a bit more and we'll have another great price rally.

Nobody claimed to believe they are right. I don't even know how anyone can read such nonsense from my post. I even mentioned that you can never really predict where the interest rate journey is headed. Let the Chinese guy stir up the Taiwan issue a bit more and we'll have another great price rally.

And I never claimed that you believe he is right. But enough of the semantic hair-splitting: For me, your post was just one of many in the thread quoting opinions from experts (or analysts, consultants, ...) on interest rate developments, coincidentally the most recent one. And I simply don't understand why anyone assigns informational value to such opinions. That's it.