House purchase: Financing (with/without equity)

We are 44 and 43 years old and are now buying a house. The bank has by no means kicked us out....

Not us either, we are also in our early 40s. The working life is getting longer and longer, and especially academics usually only start earning real money at 30. If equity is also supposed to be saved up beforehand. Besides, it is more important for the bank that the market value of the property is higher than the loan value, then the age of the borrowers is of secondary importance.

Think about the divorce!

That sounds as if the divorce petition has already been filed. Divorces can always happen, but if you firmly factor something like that in, you neither need to build nor buy nor have children. So we have never thought about any divorce, even though I am a child of divorce (risk) and this is already my second marriage. If you are lucky and not in a hurry, you can also get detached houses under 200k in the Frankfurt/Mainz/Wiesbaden area, which are decent, and certainly around Hanover. It then depends on whether you can/want to match your financial situation with your demands.

a divorce is always the ruin with a house, unless only 1 person is registered or you separate on good terms. this can be completely impossible to fully secure in a financing. as long as 1 person could pay for the house alone, they can also take over the house completely in the first years (if there was no large equity involved) without paying out the other (because there is nothing to pay out yet). however, a reasonable cooperation is absolutely necessary for this. in case of a sale, ruin is pre-programmed, unless the house has increased in value extremely during that time.

saving for a house is pointless with a household income of 3000. if you save 500€ per month, you have covered the incidental costs in 3 years. unfortunately, by then the price of the property has increased by more than 18,000€ due to the new energy saving regulation, general price increases, etc... that is actually the nice thing about a house financing: the financing amount remains the same for the entire fixed interest period. what is still a lot today (e.g. 1200€ with 3000€), might be a joke in 10 years. I also see it somewhat like rent, only that it does not increase until the end of the fixed interest period. if you plan and set this intelligently, you have many years of peace and in the end maybe nothing left to pay or only a manageable amount. financing 50,000 in 15-20 years for a 300,000€ house is really no longer a feat.

I do think that the topic of divorce does not need to be discussed in depth if the question is not aiming at it at all - nevertheless, here is my personal take on the subject: After my divorce, I was able to keep our house alone with a ridiculous €1700 plus €200 extra income, because ... for us in our younger years it didn't have to be a new construction project, which was hard to pay off, but also nice terraced houses and semi-detached houses in the existing stock allowed very nice nest building and living. One can build on this property in the future and possibly expand or build for other needs. Now we have built a single-family house, and it is certainly for the two of us a) not too late at the age of 45/55 back then, as well as b) extremely easy to finance.