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Comment by erinnh | Hacker News Reader

Thats wrong. At least right now.

10% down payment is quite common currently in Germany for a house.

Well the money still needs to be paid at some point. If you go the 10% deposit route, you will get slightly worse interest rates and overall higher monthly payments. Payments that you need to maintain for ~20 years…

The 10% is what is currently often done because it barely moves the interest rates.

The interest rates are just so low that waiting to get a loan and buy a house is mostly money lost by not getting that stupidly low interest loan.

10% is the absolute minimum and doesn't buy you anything of the house, it just covers the legal and realtor fees.

That is mad. On a 500,000 EUR house, 50,000 EUR goes to realtors and lawyers?! What on earth are they doing for that kind of money? Is that including some large tax?

In the UK, you wouldn’t pay more than a few thousand for a lawyer and associated conveyancing fees, and the vendor pays the realtor (usually in the range of 0.5-1.5% I believe).

We do have stamp duty (tax) which can be substantial eg 15,000 on a 500,000 property.

I moved to Germany a few years back (was born and raised in the UK). When I saw the 4%+ just to the realtors... I was pretty shocked.

I swore to my wife that I'm not paying almost 20K to the person giving me a tour of a house.

Seems like selling houses might be a better job than software.

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