Special right of termination according to § 489 Building Code - Refunds

Hi,

I am well aware that there is no legal advice here. I just want to gather your experienced opinions.
My currently financing bank informed me last year and earlier this year through our bank advisor that we can terminate our current financing as of 11/2024 (10 years + 6 months). I asked him to give me the exact termination date and in mid-January I inquired about a follow-up financing at other banks.
Now, after more than 6 weeks, my current bank got back to me and writes that I can terminate as of 08/2025.
What happened? The bank paid out the loan in full to a preliminary financing bank in 05/2014. This apparently transferred the money back (we never received documents about this) and the current bank reissued the loan in 02/2015. Now my bank says the final payout was in 02/2015, so I can terminate as of 08/2025.
In your opinion, is this permissible? §489 says after full payout, and that was 05/2014, regardless of whether this was an error on the bank's part or not.
Moreover, our bank advisor repeatedly gave us the date 05/2014.

Normally, I would almost not care, just eight months later. If interest rates hadn’t risen dramatically since mid-January and instead of 0.9% we weren’t now receiving 1.65%. Damage of about €5000!

I have now filed a complaint and am considering getting legal advice right away.

Lay opinion: When did the correct full payment take place? In 02/2015. So from then on 10+6 until the restructuring. Why? Because the refund makes the loan appear as if no disbursement ever took place. You also did not pay any interest or similar.

Sorry, but I would follow the bank's argumentation.

Lay opinion: When was the correct full payment made? In 02/2015. So from then on 10+6 until the restructuring. Why? Because the repayment makes the loan appear as if no disbursement had ever been made. You also did not pay any interest or similar.

Sorry, but I would follow the bank's argument.

Thank you and it is not about me wanting to get a confirmation, but actually your opinions. Hopefully this will make it clearer to me how to proceed if the bank rejects my complaint.

Too bad, no one else has an opinion?

Also just an opinion, for me the full payout was 02/2015. This should have been noticed by you when reviewing the account statements, since you had the pre-financing with the other bank up to this date and accordingly paid interest on it for that long. Therefore, in my understanding, full payout 02/2015. Whether someone can twist this later on, no idea. Why was there a refund and who made a mistake back then... The fact is that the bank ultimately providing the financing had not fully paid out until 02/15.

Good evening,

so the questions:

do you have anything in writing from the advisor:
so this statement:
"notified our bank advisor that we can terminate our current financing as of 11/2024 (10 years + 6 months)"
(did he call you? or do you even have something written like a letter? email?)

You do have the bank statement for the year 2014 (annual bank statement)
how does the booking look there?
money out, and directly (1-2 days) back in? (no interest was charged)

or was it longer, and you paid interest for it?

so that it can be better estimated
it reads as if the bank wanted to make the full payout as of 05/2014, but the payment did NOT arrive from the "pre-financing bank" and they probably received the notification that the "pre-financing can only be redeemed as of 02/2015"
so then it wouldn’t be an error of the bank, but rather at the bank that made the "pre-financing"... and then the other question arises: were the termination periods observed? (just as a hint!)

and to get favorable interest rates, one could also have closed a forward in December, whether then as of 11/2024 or 08/2025 (the forward premium between the two dates would probably be around 0.15%) i.e. exactly look at the annual statement from 2014, or alternatively have the bank give it in writing for which date you can get out.

as I said, it is very annoying, but personally I don’t see any error here at the financing bank if you don’t know exactly how it came about that the actual payout happened much later...

did it not occur to you in 2014 that you did not pay interest/installments for more than half a year?