Home financing ever possible? Probably not!

As 11ant so aptly puts it: "Renting out in lot size 1 is not really subject to amusement tax." Even though this concerns granny flats, I still think that millionaires tend not to see the single-family home as a capital investment. More often, I know cases where single-family homes are acquired through inheritance but not used by the owners themselves, and for various, partly sentimental reasons, they prefer to rent them out rather than sell them. Here in the Siebengebirge, houses are still changing hands, but you can already notice that prices no longer reach the levels they did two or three years ago.

Again: Few people here have dream houses, but also no one built a flair 125 like us has any claim to it solely based on their salary. And whether your arguments about why the conditions are the way they are now hold true, I, like some others here, have serious doubts about that.

Banks are, like all businesses, profit-oriented; how much this then goes toward "greed" can certainly be philosophized about at length.
Regarding the consideration about your friend: if the loan should still make sense for the bank at a lower rate, why couldn’t the loan have been concluded at that rate from the start? Where is the compromise on the part of the person affected who uses the same house but pays less? The bank concluded the loan contract based on the calculation of receiving amount X in cash every month. If they now only receive, for example, half of X, it is understandable that they do not want to go along with it. Because one can only assume that this reduction in payment will be permanent. Neither a dramatically increased income nor taking on a second borrower/repayer can be reasonably expected. So, where is the compromise?
That means it’s not even about foreclosure yet; even a normal purchase of a "divorce house" would be immoral as long as at least one person would have preferred to stay living in the house?

I want to say again that I am a bit irritated because I have the impression that I am generally being accused of having a sense of entitlement. It is treated as if every person who criticizes the real estate market wants to be given a dream house. I know that it might not do me any good in the end and that realities are what they are, regardless of what is written here. I also do not want to exclude the possibility that in one or two years we might go into debt just for the sake of buying. But I have the feeling that it could possibly go wrong because there is simply no security.

So it is not really about you, since you can afford a house, but about market mechanisms? But you haven't even understood the causes yet and blame it on foreigners.

You just don't want to support the co-earners in the house purchase (state/agent). Ok. But that's a different argument.

Right! Exactly, that's what it's about! Well spotted!
And why do you want to interpret that negatively now? Of course, it's solely and exclusively about that, what else could it be about?
Of course, it's about those who simply claim more money for themselves, even though it doesn't belong to them, and exploit the population.

I'm actually quite amazed that THIS hasn't become clear after more than 40 pages by now!! (Where is the shock smiley)

Right! Exactly, that's what it's about! Well spotted! And why do you want to take this negatively now? Of course, it is solely and only about that, what else could it be about? Of course, it's about those who simply claim more money for themselves, although it doesn't belong to them, and exploit the population. I'm really very surprised that THIS hasn't become clear after over 40 pages by now!! (Where is the shock emoji)

And why do you open a thread for that in which it is about financial planning? This is about: How can you finance & afford your house construction. If you only and exclusively want to complain about the state, create yourself a Twitter account.

What I want to say is: It really doesn't have to come to foreclosures if banks are willing to make compromises. It's simply greed that leads to something like this and is completely unnecessary! It seems like banks even want people to eventually be unable to pay their mortgage so they can snatch the property for themselves.

Hmm, that doesn't make any sense at all. The bank doesn't "snatch" the property if they let it be foreclosed. The property then transfers ownership to the buyer. Banks are often just as uninterested in foreclosures as homeowners, since they often incur a loss in the process. Your friend wouldn't have ended up insolvent if the proceeds from the foreclosure had exceeded the remaining debt. And since your friend had to go into insolvency, and the bank was probably among the creditors, they didn't make a great deal but only limited their losses. You also can't arbitrarily reduce installments if a borrower simply "drops out" because the marriage breaks up. These are completely different security conditions for the bank. Just quickly reducing the installment with the same remaining debt leads to a greatly reduced repayment rate; mathematically, that just doesn't always work out. Your friend probably wouldn't have gotten the loan as it was back then without his wife on the contract. Therefore, in the case of separation, you can't expect the bank to offer those conditions retrospectively.

Sometimes I think you need to understand the market and financial instruments first before getting upset about them.

Hmm, that doesn’t make any sense at all. The bank doesn’t exactly "snatch" the property if they have it auctioned off. The property then transfers ownership to the buyer. Banks are often just as uninterested in foreclosures as homeowners, since they often end up taking a loss there. Your friend wouldn’t have gone bankrupt if the auction proceeds had exceeded the remaining debt. And since your friend had to declare insolvency, and the bank was probably among the creditors, they didn’t make a great deal but just limited the damage. You can’t just arbitrarily reduce installments if a borrower simply "drops out" because the marriage breaks up. Those are completely different security conditions for the bank. Simply lowering the installment with the same remaining debt leads to a greatly reduced repayment rate; it just doesn’t add up mathematically. Your friend probably wouldn’t have gotten the loan as it was back then without his wife on the contract. So you can’t expect the bank to offer those terms retroactively in the event of separation. Sometimes I think you need to understand market and financial instruments first before getting upset about them.

Kati, on the topic that I supposedly need to understand our market mechanisms: The fact is, the use of the word damage limitation is simply wrong because it creates the impression that the bank has suffered a loss. The truth is that banks with their state license to create money out of nothing never really have a "loss," since the distributed money doesn’t belong to them anyway; the state simply grants them that right. The bank would even make a profit if the repayment plan had continued with half the installment, and unfortunately at that time real estate prices fell more steeply, so the sale price couldn’t cover the purchase price. (As I said, it didn’t have to come to that. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter to me personally, but it is just meant to show how banks think and that home financing is not without risk at such prices.)