New construction or existing property? House or apartment?

Just a quick note about the house you’re showing us.
Beautifully edited pictures, BUT for example:
- no traditional heating in the house (pipes would have to be installed in every room), but instead an electricity-consuming electric underfloor heating + fireplace
- energetically in the untouched original condition (except for the windows)
- attic with potential – everything including the roof needs to be done
- idyllic location = no school, no baker, no supermarket or discount store etc.

Sure, you can probably fit in well in a close-knit village community and ALWAYS depend on the car (or even two of them). But you have to want that. How far is the commute to work for both of you? How do you manage that including driving for the child?
And you also have to consider a six-figure sum for the house to make it “modern.” If electric underfloor heating + fireplaces are not enough to heat the house and infrared heating was installed in addition, there’s a lot to do.

It wouldn’t be for me.

Then honestly better the “simple” new-build house, which also doesn’t need to be touched for the next 20 years apart from aesthetic matters. And if necessary, you can grow into a still-developing community. Or of course the condominium on-site. Also not to be underestimated in a nice multi-family house.

So..
this looks more like a money pit to me. It has little to do with lifestyle.
You have to put a lot of work into it, as also says.
There’s old wiring hanging around, probably as old as the tube radio in the picture. The ceilings also look to me like there is something unpleasant inside between the beams.
Built in 1900, those will be paper-thin walls, and the infrared heaters were presumably installed just to get some heat at all.
The only things are the bathroom and the kitchen, which look pretty decent, but I don’t want to know what the wiring and pipes look like.
You really have to see it very romantically and idyllically to talk yourself into liking the house.

For what you pay and have to put in, you can certainly get a nice, new terraced house. Although with less land, but relatively new and without renovation backlog.

Better to look for land and build new.
Have you already found any plots of land?

The simple new-build house would be great and also my favorite, if only I knew whether you could trust the current providers!?

Do you think a townhouse for just under 550k € is realistically possible?

I personally belong to the faction that it's not about what is "mathematically better," but about what life feels better with at the current moment.

So if you believe that a house makes you happier and/or enables a better life, then I would definitely pursue that plan.

First of all, you should really and realistically deal with the location you see yourselves in. It makes a huge difference whether you drive 10 or 50 km each way to work. For me, it's not even the kilometers that are decisive, but the time invested!

For locations that are mentally in question, I would drive the route a few days in a row to find out if I would want to do it permanently. In fact, we have excluded 2 plots of land exactly that way in the past.

You have a net income of €5000, which I personally do not consider little, but in your region it is probably not necessarily the income with which one should finance a property starting at €500k.

Currently, there is 1 child; if more are planned, the income situation would change again.

Of course, €80k is good equity, but at the moment it feels like just a drop in the ocean.

Given the current prices, income, and equity, I would initially look at an affordable and possibly not too old or new townhouse.