Construction financing - duration of land purchase / house construction

Of course, there can be problems with the real estate transfer tax. Therefore, my advice!

So there are no problems with the real estate transfer tax, right?

That depends on whether the purchase of the land and the construction of the house are considered a connected transaction by the tax office. Just google that...

We don't know if your seller is the "Klaus-Otto-Grund-GmbH," which is still carrying out the development for you, and your general contractor is supposed to be the "Klaus-Otto-Hausbau-GmbH." Or what your tax office will interpret later.

We do not know whether your seller is the "Klaus-Otto-Grund-GmbH", which is still carrying out the development for you, and your general contractor is supposed to be the "Klaus-Otto-Hausbau-GmbH". Or what your tax office will interpret later.

Yes, he said that they are different parties, so there is no problem with the real estate transfer tax in this case.

Also in my fictional example, there are different parties. My point is that even in such a constellation ([Grundstück von A, Bau von B]) there can be a single transaction/ or it can be assessed as such by the tax office. I am happy to believe that there are no problems in the specific case, but that does not allow for a general statement ("it depends").

Variable interim financing means that I finance the land first and as soon as I want to finance the house, I switch together with the house and land to another/new loan? But then I can’t secure the low interest rates we still have at the moment, since it might look different in a year, right?

Yes, that is correct. But don’t overlook that "securing the interest rate" costs money. A forward loan has a higher interest rate than a current one with the same conditions. The same applies to the home savings contract and also for loans with a longer fixed interest period. And also the loans secured by a land charge have a lower interest rate, but you pay for it (possibly twice) with the registration fees for the land charge plus notary fees.

Which of these is the best option for you depends largely on the length of the period until construction. The rest is crystal ball gazing; some also call it gambling. At least the framework conditions suggest that there will not be much movement in the interest rate market in the next 12 months.

We had exactly the same situation, bought a plot of land in autumn 2016 and only started building in spring 2017.

Since our house construction takes about 12 months, we decided on a so-called CAP loan.
This CAP loan is agreed for a certain term but can be fully repaid at any time. We only paid a small fee (0.4% of the loan amount) as an interest rate cap premium, since the interest rate for the CAP loan is not fixed but is based on the European key interest rate. With this premium, we have prudently set an upper limit on the interest rate. However, we could have also saved that, since the interest rate is still at the old value .

Now that the end of our construction phase was in sight, we fully repaid the CAP loan together with the mortgage and now only repay one loan.
Through this loan, we avoided commitment interest.

Since we were able to show the purchase price of the plot as equity at the time, the bank waived registering a land charge.

Maybe you can discuss this model with your bank.