Financing comparison: past vs. today

As YPG wrote, it was not uncommon. And the construction period was long. My father started in 1980, moving in was in 1984, not completion.

Uh, my father was a high earner, authorized officer, and later self-employed. They didn’t do anything different than others. Every year a beach holiday, Italy or Mallorca. And the parents sometimes spent a week apart with a boyfriend/girlfriend. My parents come from working-class families, they themselves were aspiring. You can’t really call them nouveau riche, they worked too much for that. Architect-designed house of 160 sqm, two cars, we were doing well. (Now they are doing well too.) You have very little insight into the “back then” and “earlier,” it seems.

That sounds great. It’s just two different approaches and ways of thinking coming together, and it has nothing to do with then and now. Nowadays, many people also build on a tight budget or with lots of bells and whistles, although 1. it could be smaller and simpler and 2. the term stretches far into retirement. Your parents and you just set different priorities than I do, which, as I said, is not a problem. Then maybe the architect-designed house was somewhat oversized, and your parents didn’t mind paying it off well into retirement. It wouldn’t be for me; I also don’t want my wife’s pension to be spent on anything related to the house.

Very interesting how different the experiences regarding "back then" are here. I was born in 1990 in the countryside and we always had warm water, except for a few strawberries and an apple tree, also rather playground equipment in the garden, an oil heating system, etc., and from around 1997 even a computer ;-) Almost all friends and classmates (so the period around 2000) lived in their own houses. Off the top of my head, I can only think of families with a migration background who rented or families where both parents (like my parents) did not come from the area. The mothers were mostly at home, although that slowly changed... With my youngest siblings, this is no longer so pronounced. My parents bought, I think in 1997, the house we previously rented. It cost about 300,000 Marks, if I remember correctly. We will buy a similar house with a slightly smaller plot of land in the same location for 240,000 Euros. That is below market value, but I cannot say exactly where the market value lies. (Before the war and the resulting irritations now, one would certainly have gotten over 300,000 for it. Now, no idea). Here is a concrete price increase in this one case.

You didn’t have a forest either. We had our first computer in ’94. Back then with 100 MB ROM and a 3.5-inch floppy disk drive. Building cheaply is still possible today. There is currently a result here in the forum for under 2,000 euros.

I am of the opinion that building cheaply is still very possible today. But probably no longer on such a broad scale. Many families and circles of friends are spread all over Germany; a stable circle of acquaintances over many years is often the exception. What is missing are the connections to the bricklayer, electrician, plumber, etc. Or the buddy who is a landscape gardener, can lend you the mini excavator on weekends, and helps you pave the driveway. In addition, demands have increased in almost all areas. Moreover, hardly anyone really wants to delve into unfamiliar topics anymore. People preferred to pay more – money doesn’t cost anything after all. Those fat years are probably over. Not only have interest rates risen accordingly, but supply chains are also disrupted. A price adjustment in the trades can therefore hardly be done through materials. Nor through wages. After all, inflation must be compensated. On top of that comes the relatively expensive building land. All in all, it can be said that building cheaply was easier in the past than it is today.

Mine wouldn't be,

That's not the point here. But you have to mention it when someone born in 1991 talks about the past, what "the past" actually means here. "The past" implies one or more generations before. Not 10 years and a bit. I am probably also a generation away from you, but I happen to know the numbers and salaries realistically from what you assume. And therefore I also had different conditions for building/buying than my parents. And honestly: how many people (here in the forum or elsewhere) are financing nowadays barely at the limit over 40 years, who still benefit from the 1-2%?! There are more than enough. But as already says: you can't compare apples with oranges - even the global thinking and information was missing back then without the internet. The times were and are different. And everyone has to find their place in their time.