Private retirement provision and free saving alongside financing?

The incidental costs that the tenant would not have to pay and the (currently hardly existent) interest on the saver’s credit balance would still have to be taken into account.

Which additional costs does the tenant not have to pay?

There are non-allocable ancillary costs, which include, for example, repairs/maintenance and, in a certain sense, also depreciation on buildings/kitchens.

I have now roughly entered our data into this calculator from FMH.
A rental apartment building would cost us about €1000 per month in cold rent.
I have offers for a loan interest rate of 2.3%, I have left out realtor fees, etc., since we don’t have to pay those.

The only thing I can’t say is the interest rate for savings. I have assumed it to be 2% for now; with a 4% return, the property buyer would still have €39k more after 30 years.
With a 4.5% return, the homeowner would have almost €16k less.

So, why is it always assumed that economically you are much better off without a house?

I don’t want to complain, I’d just like to understand

I don't understand why people always assume that they would have much more money if they put the money aside instead of buying the house.

It depends! The 30,000 euros that I am burning today on property transfer tax and notary fees, of course, I could also spend on a 5-star all-inclusive vacation, ten ski trips, two breast augmentations, or on stocks of, let's say, the Commerzbank. Or in the savings sock. And now you can guess who ends up with the greater wealth.

Somehow the numbers don't seem to add up.

If you plan an annual reserve of 1% of the property value, that already amounts to 308 euros per month in the first year. Accordingly, your underlying loan installment is only 1080 euros. However, to repay 295,550 over 30 years at a continuous 2.39% interest rate, you actually need a 1150 euro installment. The main problem, however, is the projected increase in value. Apart from prime locations, you will only realize the original value upon sale with luck, but certainly no profit.

It would rather look like this: 1450x12x30 = 522,000 euros spent. The house is sold for 380,000, resulting in a loss of 142,000 euros. The tenant has saved the difference monthly and owns the stated 218,000 after 30 years.

After 30 years, the tenant is therefore 360,000 euros better off... and this with a return of only 2% when compared to a cheap loan. Moreover, they bear no risk and remain flexible for life. Fairly, it must be said that rent for a truly comparable property is actually always more expensive than your own financing, since the landlord basically spends the same as you do, but also wants to make a profit.

But nobody rents as they would build/buy, and not least for that reason, the tenant ends up better off mathematically... of course only if they haven't blown the money on breast augmentations