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Comment by pintxo | Hacker News Reader

Technically, there is competition. You are free to choose whichever notary you want. But pricing is legally regulated, so you will pay the same price everywhere.

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The amount of notaries in Germany is very limited. . You can’t just study that and open a notary in Germany. They are cash cows that obviously don’t want competition. During Covid Germany was the only country of its neighbors that did not do remote attestations.

From 2000 to 2020 the number of notaries in Germany had almost halved. How is that normal for any country ? Unless they replaced notaries with automation which Germany didn’t .

Almost halved = 30% less

https://www.juve.de/markt-und-management/notariate-immer-wen...

Also it seems that 30% loss was mostly in regions not experiencing economic growth. While others actually saw growth in the number of notaries as well.

    > During Covid Germany was the
    > only country of its neighbors
    > that did not do remote attestations.

Same in the Netherlands.

No, even the Netherlands had a temporary act to allow attestation using digital means.

https://www.osborneclarke.com/insights/dutch-covid-19-tempor...

The solution is easy: Create a small company to own the property. That company can be sold much more easily than the property itself. It also avoids the tax on propery purchase.

Companies have other issues like VAT/GST and reporting. I had a friend use a company in New Zealand and it cost him multiple % of property price due to an issue he didn't forsee.

New Zealand doesn't have notiaries or special insurance but you do need to use a lawyer to transfer ownership and I think it costs about NZD1500 each for vendor and buyer.

Yes, for Germany you can expect at least around 5k/a in costs for accounting, audits etc.

The property tax thing is actually not true. Not if the company only exists to hold properties. The tax office is not that stupid.

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