Investment as equity capital, how much should be kept as reserves?

Yes, that's true. But please don't reduce this to a simplistic calculation, otherwise it will go wrong. Capital gains are taxable and returns are associated with risk. The spread between loan interest and return must be significant for it to be worthwhile and the risk justified.

even if you make a slight loss, it might be worth not making special repayments. if you don't pay 3 installments, they come down hard on you, regardless of whether you have made the maximum special repayments in the last 5 years or not. of course you can talk to them and often find a solution, but it's much easier to simply pay the installments from your reserve. it depends on how secure the income is. a civil servant with good occupational disability insurance certainly needs to keep less in reserve than a small self-employed person working alone. we keep €10,000 on hand. with that you can pay the installment for 1 year straight. since income normally doesn't drop from full salary to zero (but rather around 60% through unemployment benefits, parental allowance, sick pay, etc.), you can pay the installments for several years. if all else fails, there is still a father who would help out. in the end, those who are always the worst off are the ones who didn't have much to begin with and now can't come up with the €10,000 due to lack of decent income.

Even if you make a slight loss with it, it might be worth not making special repayments. If you don't pay three installments, they’ll come down hard on you, no matter if you have made the maximum special repayments in each of the last 5 years or not.

Another perspective:
The owner-occupied house is perceived as a safe investment or is supposed to be one. Concrete gold, so to speak. From this aspect, it is unreasonable to replace the repayment of the loan with an investment in another asset with higher risk and thus a chance of higher returns. This way, the supposedly safe investment in the home becomes a gamble again.
Anyone who has taken a repayment break and instead invested in a capital life insurance policy can sing a song about this, because their return was supposed to be higher than the loan interest rate...

Paying off debts means securing guaranteed returns!

In principle, I am almost of the same opinion for myself. I, and probably you as well, am not the risk/entrepreneur type. Usually, every entrepreneur is personally liable with their private assets. If the house is not secure anyway, why not use the leverage effect. And even without entrepreneurship, one can certainly weigh chance and risk. With rising interest rates, it would not be unreasonable for savings interest to exceed the current mortgage interest rate.

By the way, my old building society contract also yields more interest than I pay in mortgage interest. That’s why I currently keep it. Available on short notice for emergencies and bearing higher interest than the loan. The reserve couldn’t be better invested.

: I think it’s great that you are giving it some thought. We are now approaching the completion of the house, so here is a little review. We have kept a small buffer of equity and currently the 2-3 net monthly salaries mentioned by on the checking account and on the savings account as a reserve to be able to cover the installments for about 1 1/2 years. In addition, there are reserves for both cars + savings contracts.

Best regards, Rina

Why hold so much equity when you can make special repayments.

It is important to be otherwise secured against eventualities. Better a proper disability insurance & risk life insurance than 180k equity in the account.

As a self-employed person (with all the risks), we keep an absolute emergency reserve of about 100,000 EUR. This should cover roughly 1.5 to 2 years in case of emergency.

Anyone who cannot pay small things like a washing machine (today you can buy one for 300..400 EUR) from their monthly income should better not build a house!

Regards, Steffen

Anyone who "has to" buy a washing machine for 300.-€ from Candy or so (there are also Privileg and other brands) should perhaps reconsider building a house. And a Miele does not just come out of the monthly income for everyone on the side.