House transfer / buying from ex with ongoing loan / costs

The windfall ran internally. Please read carefully!

Civil Code (Building Code)
§ 433 Typical contractual obligations in a sales contract
(1) By the sales contract, the seller of an item is obliged to deliver the item to the buyer and to transfer ownership of the item. The seller must provide the buyer with the item free from material and legal defects.
(2) The buyer is obliged to pay the agreed purchase price to the seller and to accept the purchased item.

Money for the transfer of ownership = purchase. Regardless of the form in which the contract was concluded or what one would like to call it o_O
Something else, of course, is equalization of accrued gains etc.
The tax difference is ex-husband vs ex-girlfriend.

The windfall of money was internal. Please read carefully!

I did. But no matter what you call it, he received money and you got the house. And that (even without money) is called property acquisition or, plainly, a "purchase."

Apart from that, you as (still) spouses transferred or settled assets in the property division. You can acquire = buy without real estate transfer tax in that case. But I had also written that. That’s what the law says.


But that has absolutely nothing to do with the situation of the OP.

While I’m just googling at the PC (it’s been a while): it must have been a property transfer (assignment).

We also only went to the notary back then, had me removed from the land register and released from the loan at the bank. Nothing more. But we were married ;) the OP is not and that is probably the crucial difference!

Civil Code (Building Code)
§ 433 Typical contractual duties in the purchase contract
(1) By the purchase contract, the seller of an item is obliged to hand over the item to the buyer and to transfer ownership of the item. The seller must provide the buyer with the item free from material and legal defects.
(2) The buyer is obliged to pay the agreed purchase price to the seller and to accept the purchased item.

Money for transfer of ownership = purchase. No matter in which form the contract was made or what one wants to call it o_O
Something else is of course equalization of accrued gains etc.
The tax difference is ex-husband vs. ex-girlfriend.

But no matter what you call it, he got money

Wrong! It was not a purchase/sale.
It was a transfer. The house was financed, among others, by a bank, but also private loans. The fact that my EX got his contribution back had nothing to do with purchase/sale. I will not write more detailed or anything more about it now, because then I will immediately read from other users here what was in our notary contract. :p … just think about it ;)

I have to agree here with .

If someone gives you a chest containing their own money and the deal is that you get to keep the chest if you hand over the contents, is that a purchase? Probably not.

I have to agree here with . If someone gives you a chest containing their own money and the deal is now that you can keep the chest if you hand over the contents, is that a purchase? Probably not.

If you hand him a bundle of money equivalent to the value of the contents in exchange for the chest: Yes