For the purchase of houses and condominiums, the Germans are increasingly debts. The volume of housing loans has risen by about a quarter within ten years, according to the Ministry of Finance's response to a request from the Greens parliamentary group, the dpa news agency.
In 2018, private households raised around 995 billion euros to finance residential real estate. If you include self-employed and sole traders, the volume increases to around 1.2 trillion euros.
The Greens see clear signs of overheating of the market. The federal government is still fueling the fire, by promoting the risky financing of home ownership, criticized financial expert Lisa Paus. "The signs of easing lending are particularly worrisome."
Citizens can afford bigger loans
More and more money is flowing into the real estate market, while the purchase prices have increased even more than rents. From the point of view of the Greens, the increase is also due to the fact that more real estate funds and housing companies are investing.
However, this development alone is not necessarily an indication of a critical escalation in the credit market. A factor is the extremely low financing costs that have existed for years, ie the expenses that borrowers have to expect when taking out and repaying a loan. They profit above all from the very low interest rates. Even real estate loans with a fixed interest rate of one percent over 20 years are currently offered by many banks.
In other words, homebuyers with high loan amounts will have to repay more to the banks in the future. But many can afford it because at the same time the regular interest payments required for this are low.
Examples can be found in our home finance calculator:
