Housing & property
Rent, buy or manage a home — with honest 2026 numbers.
Purchase check
Rent, buy or manage a home — with honest 2026 numbers.
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Section tools
🔮 30-Year Reality Check — buy this home, or rent & invest?
A merciless, assumption-honest simulation: a real German annuity loan (interest + amortization), purchase side-costs burned on day one, growing maintenance, rent inflation — against investing the same money in an ETF. Every assumption is a slider you control.
Day-one capital evaporation (Kaufnebenkosten)
Of your €60.000 cash, €36.210 goes to state transfer tax + notary + broker before you own a single € more of equity than you started with — it never enters your equity or ETF-style compounding.
In the rent + save scenario, the full €60.000 starts compounding from day one instead. This is a real, computed figure from your inputs above — not an estimate.
Basic inputs
These are ASSUMPTIONS you choose, not a promise — drag the slider to your own number, or pick a different preset; past returns guarantee nothing.
Physical investment gold in Germany typically carries a 2–5% dealer premium (Aufgeld) over the spot price, on both buying and reselling — deducted here once from every euro that enters this scenario, before it starts compounding. Bars/coins meeting investment-gold criteria are VAT-exempt (§25c UStG), so this premium is the main real-world friction.
Physical gold held over 1 year is tax-free on sale (§23 EStG Spekulationsfrist). Every scenario here runs at least 10 years, so that exemption is always already met by the end — the capital-gains tax toggle above does not apply to this preset.
Figures shown are before tax. Capital-gains tax (Abgeltungsteuer), Freistellungsauftrag, Kirchensteuer, Verlusttopf and your personal tax situation are not modeled here — your real after-tax numbers will differ.
Loan needed: €276.210 · Monthly annuity: €1.335 · Loan fully paid in year 29
Advanced assumptions (edit to stress-test)
Property appreciation, rent inflation, alternative return, maintenance and horizon — collapsed by default so the first screen isn't a wall of sliders.
Real monthly ownership cost — not just the loan
Optional — enter the real figures from the Exposé or Kaufvertrag if you have them. Left at 0 if unknown; these add on top of the loan and maintenance already shown above.
Total monthly outflow to own this home: €1.660 (loan €1.335 + maintenance €325 + Hausgeld/insurance/Grundsteuer €0) vs €1.000 rent for the same home.
That is €660/month more than renting. A renter can usually cut spending or move if income drops; this extra amount does not have the same flexibility once you own — a temporary income drop still has to be covered somehow.
Object details (optional, for the two calculators below)
§ 28 II. BV official reference for this building age: €9/m²/year ≈ €675/year (≈0,2% of purchase price).
Source: § 28 Abs. 2 II. BV (Zweite Berechnungsverordnung) — the official age-tiered reference German Hausverwaltungen use for maintenance reserves. A reference, not a prediction for this specific building.
Energy-class renovation exposure (optional)
Base scenario — under the assumptions above
You must stay at least this long for buying to come out ahead of renting. If you leave earlier, renting + investing usually results in higher estimated net worth.
At 30 years, a sale would be tax-free under §23 EStG (Spekulationsfrist of 10 years already passed) — not modeled as a deduction, just disclosed since the horizon already qualifies.
Local only — not synced to your account yet
Three scenarios, not one number
The base scenario uses your assumptions above. Conservative and stress automatically shift the alternative return, property appreciation, maintenance and interest downward/upward to show how sensitive the result is — they are not predictions, and none of the three is "the answer".
Buy now vs. rent + save, then buy later
A third strategy: rent and invest everything for N years (same mechanics as the RENT+ETF path above), then buy at that point using the grown portfolio as your equity, for the remaining horizon. Computed with the same engine, run twice — not a new model.
Under these assumptions, buying today results in about €80.368 higher estimated net worth at the end of the horizon than waiting.
At the wait year: property price ≈€328.033 (grown), accumulated equity ≈€123.355, remaining loan needed ≈€244.272.
Both branches assume the SAME loan interest rate is available whenever the purchase happens — a real simplification, since actual future rates cannot be known. If rates rise by the time you'd buy, the “wait” branch is understated here; if they fall, it's overstated.
Is the unpaid rent counted? Yes — here is how
The model compares EQUAL monthly cash flows. The buyer never pays rent — instead they pay loan + maintenance. Right now: buyer pays €1.660/month (annuity €1.335 + maintenance €325) vs rent €1.000. The renter is €660/month cheaper and invests that difference (plus the full €60.000 equity from day 1) into the ETF — that is exactly where the rent-saving advantage of buying is netted against.
After the loan is paid off, the buyer’s housing cost drops to maintenance only and the model automatically credits the buyer with the then-saved rent.
Money burned with no return (sunk costs)
Loan principal (Tilgung) is not counted as a burned cost below — it builds your equity. Only interest, side costs and maintenance are sunk.
You are the bank's partner: over the horizon you pay back 1,63× the loan. Loan €276.210 → total to bank €449.575.
Annuity X-ray — interest vs. principal in your loan
By year 5, you will have paid €80.101 to the bank: €49.734 was interest (gone, no equity) and €30.367 reduced your debt (built equity).
🟥 Interest · 🟩 Principal (Tilgung)
This is the real amortization schedule of the annuity loan already computed above — not a new assumption. Interest’s share of the annuity shrinks every year as the debt shrinks.
Net worth over time
🟦 Net worth if you BUY · 🟪 Net worth if you RENT + invest · • = which side is ahead that year (colored like the bars, not a one-sided warning color)
Geographic lock-in: selling in the first ~10 years (new job, divorce, return home) triggers Vorfälligkeitsentschädigung — the bank's lost-interest penalty — on top of the burned side costs. If your stay is uncertain, weight the RENT verdict higher.
Maintenance here assumes a stable building. If the owners' association votes a big renovation with an empty reserve fund, a Sonderumlage of thousands can land within a month — check WEG minutes and the reserve before trusting any BUY verdict.
Educational simulation with YOUR assumptions — not investment advice. Past ETF returns do not guarantee future returns.