Finance construction project, total costs: €395,000

In another chart, it can be read that only 8.4% of the represented contracts have a volume of more than 300k. Ours starts with a 4, and I don't think that is an unusually high loan amount. This is probably where the "building block effect" comes into play again, many finance with more than one loan contract.

To my knowledge, they were from 2 to 2.99; so not 1.5 to 2.5

Of course, the data is quite rough; but you can see the trend regarding the initial repayment and how it has changed significantly in recent years.

The lower the interest rates, the less one should repay. Repayment is nothing other than an investment with a return equal to the interest rate.

Of course, this presupposes that financially responsible individuals are acting. If I repay 2% even though 5% would be possible, then I must of course save the difference and invest it elsewhere, e.g., in the capital market (stocks).

And this calculated term, what is that supposed to mean? If I repay 2% instead of 5%, then I save much, much more alongside. When renegotiations are due after 10 years, I can simply take, say, EUR 100,000 from the savings and take out a new loan on the remaining debt reduced by EUR 100,000. That has nothing to do with this initially calculated term anymore.

In the end, it also depends on the value of the property. Not everyone necessarily wants to keep it until the end of their life and later live without children with two to three additional rooms. Some might prefer to live in the city center in old age, etc.

So what do I care about a calculated term of 50 years if the bank agrees, when it is simply about the fact that the house is still worth, say, EUR 400,000 after 20 years and the remaining debt is only EUR 150,000 - just as an example. Then in 20 years, when the children have moved out, I will liquidate the house for EUR 400,000 (+/- EUR 20,000) and after paying off the remaining debt I will still have EUR 250,000 left over (plus my savings elsewhere).

Oh, now I know where the Greek finance ministers of the last 50 years studied. The cheapest money is still your own, bet? And the more I repay, the shorter the term, the lower the interest rate and interest expense.

Debt repayment brings guaranteed returns through avoided interest expenses. It doesn’t get safer than that. To oppose this to an asset class with significantly higher risk, which you call stocks, is reckless. Additionally, you have ignored taxes on capital gains.
Money that you definitely need at a certain point in time has no place in volatile asset classes. That is gambling.

Oh man, this is about more than just the safest of safe returns. If you lock in 10 years at 1.1% currently, it would even make more sense to pay down little at the moment and invest instead in 2-3% fixed-term deposits for 10 years. But even more sensible is, of course, to pay down the loan slightly at 1.1% and invest on the capital market with an expected return of at least 7%.

You also don’t need the money after 10 or 15 years. If it’s cheap right now, you could liquidate stocks and significantly reduce the remaining debt. If short-term interest rates are also around 3% or less in 10 or 15 years, then you’d rather finance for another 5 or 10 years.

But as I said, this is something for financially literate individuals. Don’t be offended, but apparently you need a deeper understanding here of how (large) companies operate and what private individuals usually do wrong.

10 years fixed deposit at 1.1% or 15 years fixed deposit at 1.6% are not exactly attractive investment models. Not even in today’s interest rate environment. But that is exactly the deal you enter when you choose a higher repayment rate.

And this panic fear Germans have of stocks, well. A diversified portfolio is probably even much safer than, for example, real estate as an investment. Stocks are shares in companies and thus the most real real asset there can be in a capitalist and market economy world.

Recently, Mr. Schäuble himself advised Germans to invest more in stocks.