The lending rates for home savings are as low as never. But the cheapest interest rates do not help if customers put their plans at risk through bad advice. Stiftung Warentest has examined how competent 17 building societies advise their customers. The result: The LBS Schleswig -Holstein-Hamburg was the only Bausparkarkasse just the quality judgment Good. The Alte Leipziger follows as the best nationwide box office with satisfactorily close behind. The majority of the coffers did not go beyond a sufficient amount. Three funds even failed (see full test results here).
"The result is an indictment of the industry," writes the journal "Finanztest" of Stiftung Warentest. The expert analysis of the written offers and the log sheets completed by the testers would often have identified "grotesquely bad" offers.
If the testers had followed the advice of Bauspar advisers, they would often have lost several thousand euros or had to postpone their real estate purchase for years. "The Bauspar sum was sometimes so bloated that the customers would have the money only in 15 or 20 years," the experts said.
Sometimes the home savings loan was much too small in relation to the savings, sometimes the credit rate was overwhelmingly high. And often the customers were so poorly informed about the conditions that they could hardly compare the offers with those of other funds.
As bad as the test may have been - building savings in itself is and remains a good thing for savers who want to build or buy a property in the future. You save a few years at the building society and then get their savings and additionally paid a cheap loan. Building societies pay almost no interest on savings, but they ensure their customers favorable lending rates of 1.5 to 3.0 percent for their financing.