Sell a new building and buy an existing property - pitfalls?

Try first to sell your house. That is not quite so easy at the moment.

Exactly. I am experiencing it firsthand here. New builds are being offered online for months at overpriced prices (+30% above construction costs in the new development area), which would have long been sold a year ago. Then the first price reduction follows after half a year, about -10%, and then again after three months by -10%. Problem: Even at this price, no one wants to buy anymore because interest rates have risen so much. The end of the story is that many nearly new houses remain listed here at still too high prices (despite multiple reductions) and will probably stay that way this year as well. It is simply a market of waiting. Who will give in more? The frustrated buyer who cannot find a property or the annoyed seller who cannot find someone willing to pay the asking price. Currently, I would not sell at all but watch where the journey goes. Will prices rise again in two years? Or will they fall further? No one knows.

I can tell you who cannot give in. That is the broad mass of potential buyers who do not get a loan with a €3000 installment from the bank ;)

Also think, it has less to do with wanting. It simply becomes more difficult to afford the installments for such loans. However, during the sale of our house, we also had people who could show us their account balance and simply had the required money lying around in cash. So there are such solvent buyers as well. It's just that in the current market they probably have more options than a few years ago. Nevertheless, new houses are in demand, even in rural areas. They just don't come on the market as often as the 70s glass block shack with renovation backlog.

Yeah, what you could afford in recent years with 0% equity was insane. Today, you again absolutely have to bring at least the equity for the ancillary purchase costs. Ancillary purchase costs for a current house plus kitchen and other "small things" to make it move-in ready, you need 100k saved up. That severely limits the pool of buyers.

And then you don't have any reserve for the valuation discount on the 100k. In other words, the bank is financing at full risk.