Financing single-family house in southern Lower Saxony - SPK on strike!

We now have to wait until Monday and the decision from ING.

At the same time, contact the local Sparkasse directly again, as well as those of the neighboring towns. They are - unless they have all merged extensively - all independent with significant differences in their financing offers.

Our local Sparkasse was very nice but had a worse interest rate back then. Two towns over, even nicer and at the time an unbeatable rate, where Interhyp only said I had to jump on it.

Definitely pursue multiple tracks in this situation and not one after another in series. Our Sparkassen didn’t want to know anything about Schufa either and made their assessments independently of that, in case that’s a concern, but you can find that out over the phone.

Where do you know the internal processes there so well from?

I didn't want to present myself as an expert and probably don't know the internal processes any better than you :) I just wanted to somewhat relativize the generalized statement that they are not independent. You are basically right, but I also know from personal experience that there are top consultants there who really advise independently in the interest of the client.

I commissioned 5 advisors simultaneously with determining the conditions - but of course the actual loan application was only submitted once.

One more question on a personal note: What is your experience regarding applying for financing directly with the bank without an advisor? For example, requesting financing at ING without an independent advisor. Does that make sense? Or are the conditions then still worse than with an advisor who also receives a commission for it?

We financed directly with ING at the same conditions as Interhyp would have offered.

I commissioned 5 advisors simultaneously with the condition negotiation - but of course only submitted the actual loan application once.

Ok, and what were the differences?

Update: ING sees it just as critically but will send an appraiser to the area. However, without more equity, it will probably not be possible there either.

One thing I still don’t understand. Preliminary inquiries via/through an intermediary are always positive because the general conditions (income, equity, costs, etc.) are known and fixed. By that I mean, you are told that this or that bank would finance the construction under those conditions. If you then decide on a bank, sign the contract, and send it to the bank, it is then said—depending on the scoring system or a sort of guess—that financing is not possible after all because the lending value is too low. Such a thing should already be noticeable to the intermediary, or all red flags should go off and the offers (due to the location) should not even be shown.