Maybe except for example prefabricated houses that are made up of wood panels. That's the house my parents built and they always joked "if we get a tornado, this house will probably fly away".🙈
Peter Gabriel: "Here Comes the Flood" 1977 auch auf Deutsch Witt/Heppner: "Die Flut" 1998 Juli: "Perfekte Welle" 2004 Eifel-Bronko: "An der Ahr, da ist es nass" 2021
yeah americans are like "oh a tornado took my house - no problem I just build it the same way again..." 🤣 here is more like "You saw the tornado yesterday? Yeah it took two roof tiles from my roof!" 🤣
Most street signs in Germany and other EU countries try to avoid text as much as possible, instead relying on pictograms. Reason is that they're faster to interpret and understandable to foreigners since a quick drive into a neighbouring country is very common in europe.
All of Europe (except Ireland) follows the Vienna Convention on Road Signs, so they're all the same; not just in the EU. The US's stance on this convention was as with any convention: In the UN: "This is great. We should all adopt this." At home: "We won't let the globalists tell us what to do."
My driving instructor also told me about the idea to make important signs recognizable, even if they are e.g. covered in snow. Don't know if this was a consideration, however this would dismiss text in signs as well. So one could argue that text doesn't really give any benefit especially to those signs, where it's actually getting important.
In Germany, we spend at least 12 hours of theoretical classes, 12 hours of practical driving with a licensed instructor, a practical test with roundabout 1000 questions we have to learn by heart before the test and a long driving test with an independent driving tester adding up to paying roundabout 2 - 3000 Euros to even just get our driving license. Yes, we know our signs even without script on them…
and a lot of street signs we already learned in elementary school - at least those that are also relevant for pedestrians or bicycle riders... for example also this yield-sign, because also a 10-year old kid on a bicycle must know who has right of way at a crossing, and who has to wait.
Ja und ich hasse das System. 2000€ für Führerschein und die Leute fahren so utopisch behindert da fragst du dich wie viel Bürokratie und Kosten für nichts hat DE als ganzes da wieder.
Two main reasons for high prices: 1: The piece of land You need to build Your house is very expensive 2: We build solid, with bricks and high-value insulation, not the US timber and Drywall crap. I have been to US houses, one needs AC in summer and tons of gas in winter. YES, I know US energy is cheaper but one is for sure, energy prices will rise and rise. The Americans think short-term, the house is cheap, and I will think about heating and cooling later. Example: German high insulation windows, I bet I get 5 US windows for the price of one German window. What the US owner saves at the date of buying, he pays over the years for energy loss
Why will energy prices rise? If you mean in germany, you are right, but why in the US? And germans are the only ones who really care about environmental friendly housing; americans just don‘t care and probably never will get rid of their air condition and cardboard houses. And maybe americans pay more for energy over the years; it is still much easier to buy your first own house, when your young, without getting in debt, this is impossible in germany.
@@chris_0018 Well, we at least don't start with crippeling debt, just because we went to university or had to go to the hospital... :P A bit tonge and cheek, sorry, but there is some truth to it. Why should energy prices rise in America? How about inflation, supply and demand, corporate greed. Just some suggestions. Luckily Germans are not the only ones who care about environmental friendly housing, but it is concerning that so many Americans seem to not care indeed.
add at least 20-25% on top for fees, taxes and all the other stuff -- average price of 1 m² of land (10 sq ft) in Bavaria is around 200 EUR and that's just the land. So, 20 times 20 meters, times 200 USD per m² is 80000 USD, add 20% for extra stuff, and you hit that 95000 USD. So, 65 ft times 65 ft is what you would get for your money.
Well, come to a East German small or medium town, and you get a three-room in a renovated "Altneubau" for less.Or rent, like me, for less than 500€ (incl Nebenkosten).
Another reason why many Germans don't own houses are the laws and protections for tenants. As a tenant, depending on your contract and the time you spent in this apartment, the landlord will have a hard time to throw you out. The minimum notice period is 3 months. We also have a lot of freedom with rented flats to decorate and sometimes even change the building. If you move often, as a tenant you don't have a lot of organisational work. I have lived in rented apartments for all my life and never wanted to own a house.
Our "nice little small house" (about 950 square feet) in a smallish student town with not much land was 650.000€. This house is nearly 100 years old and will surely stand for another century.
The useful life of a house in solid construction is estimated at about 100 years, but also repairs like electricity need to be done much more frequently, so you will have to pay high costs if there is still a backlog of renovations in the house.
Yeah tell that to the Bavarian wooden houses in the Mountains that have 200+ years on their Back. Its the modern houses that dont Go over 100 years. Its like with everything today. Its build to fall appart.
@@nocomment6421 i dont doubt the existence of old houses. I just said that big repairs are necessary to keep it good after such a long time, those old houses in bavaria also have been renovated, they are subject to the laws of physics just like everything
Obviously houses have to be renovated, that is only natural. Everything needs to be updated and fixed over time. Not just houses but also cars, planes, trains, roads, pipelines, high voltage power transmission and basically everything else. Even the human body needs some repairs from time to time, that's what doctors are for. But a properly build house can last a long while. And there are houses in the US from the 17th century, just like in Europe.
8:38 traffic signs in Europe usually don't come with texts. we speak different languages every few meters and written text in one language somewhat counters the purpose of traffic signs being universally understood. the sign itself is the message.
Southern Germany is generally more expensive when it comes to real estate than other parts of Germany due to being comparatively "rich" because of its industries and beautiful landscapes (tourism). On the other hand food is less expensive here. :) And Swabians in Baden-Württemberg, the state next to Bavaria, LOVE to own their houses and apartments. Unfortunately it is not as easy as it once was !
in my Street there is a House (2or 3 stories)that had a water damage it was sold for only 5k in a Foreclosure i live in a small town with 20-30k ppl but the prices gone up from 25k to 150-450k for a one family home ,i think because of Biontech they have a Lab. here ...
The American approach to road signs amuses and terrifies me at the same time :) There is a worldwide standard regarding signs; it is based on the symbols and both the shape and the colors are coded so as to make it easier to interpret, the textual parts are rightly reduced to a minimum as there are a thousand languages and you cannot expect anyone driving to know the language of the country. The USA, as usual, are always the exception. Specifically that is a: "Give way", does not force you to stop like the "stop" (red octagonal) but still tells you that you are entering a road where others have the right of way. Triangles with a white background, a red frame and a black symbol indicate dangers. Circles with a white background, a red frame and a black symbol indicate prohibitions. Circles or rectangles on a blue background with white or red symbols indicate obligations. There are many other shapes or colors but these are the three most important.
Keep in mind that the prices for houses, flats and ground went crazy only in the last few years and it depends on the region where you try to buy. if you wanna buy in Freiburg its a total other price than on the flatland near to the polish border.
True, a few years back they build a row houses near my work place here in Berlin, the english style, 2m garden in front, 6m in the back, each house just wide enough for a door and a single double window, they had 2 floors and a flat roof, these were sold for 284k in 2015. They were located in what could be called inner city rim, it would take you 15 min with the car and 30 min with the public transport to reach the city center. So you can get houses for a similar price... They will just be a lot smaller and uglier
The price increase between the mid-1980s and today's purchase prices is around four times. Example: at that time the equivalent of around €135,000 for almost 100 square meters of living space + 350 square meters of garden near the motorway, S-Bahn, bus, schools, etc. which costs today approx. €500,000 as a used property. For this price you can get just a new condominium with 75 sqm of living space in the same area**.// 1 sqm corresponds to almost 10 sq feet./ During the same period, salaries have increased on average only 2.5 times. ** Close to a major city and relatively well connected.
Yes, my parents bought a house (in the south in a rural region, 180m2 living space and 800m2 garden) for like 200k a couple of years ago and now it is valued at about 350-400k. A house in our street just recently sold for over 900k. Most of the value probably is the property on its own, since a 700m2 lot in our city is 250k right now.
A pretty important factor for the housing prices are the building regulations. A new home has to be really well isolated, they are build from bricks and last for decades and think they need to have solar power on the roof, the windows need a certain level of isolation. The rule of thumb is that 1m^2(=12square feet) will cost you around 5000 Euros to build, so a 200m^2 home is 1 Million Euros. There are cheaper places of course and if you are skilled you can do some of the building and renovations yourself, but that is rare. And land is also extremely expensive. The US is basically empty in the middle, the mid west has 10 states the size or half the size of Germany with 5 Millionen people each.
In Germany getting the drivers licence is far more difficult, than in America. You don't get it, if you don't prove you know all the signs. By the way: translated into English, Germans call this sign "Give way".
Yes, house prices are high here in Germany! Not everybody can afford it, not everybody even wants to be a home owner. We live in the Southwest of Germany, close to the French border. Prices have always been high here compared to other parts of Germany. We bought our house in the early 80s, when we were very young. My hubby is non- German. We did not have the benefit of rich parents, so we financed it over the years - not easy, but it worked. We sacrificed for it. Looking back, our house and ground which we bought in DM, German Marks - the currency at that time, has now more than doubled and the currency is Euro. We paid 200k Marks, now it is worth more than 500k €. Our neighbour, moving in at the same time, was renting since then. He only made his landlord rich!!!!! This person must be laughing his head off! We invested in the house and ground throughout the years, new bath rooms, kitchen, heating etc. Next will be energy saving windows etc. There is always something to do, but we love it here and nobody can tell us what to do or not. That is a big plus. We do not want it any other way.
Until about two years ago it still was very affordable to buy. The prices were high, but the interest rates were very low. Paying a 30 years mortgage (plus maintenance, taxes, insurance etc) usually wasn't any more expensive than renting the same place. E.g. 2.5 years ago my now- wife and i moved in together in one half of a duplex with 50% more living area and our own garden than our previous two separate apartments, but our total costs are pretty much the same as before. We'll never have to deal with rent increases though, while our incomes keep increasing, so the relative share of our incomes that goes into financing the house actually decreases. Overall it'd say that buying a house in Germany is cheaper compared to renting one, but one needs to be able to maintain a high cash flow. Much of that is basically from your left pocket to your right pocket (from your bank account to building equity), but it still can be difficult to maintain for many people. Currently due to the increased interest rates one also needs a high downpayment.
The people don't buy houses because its too expensive. A 1300 sqft House here in my area (Frankfurt and surrounding areas up to 70 km away) is easyly between 600k and 800k. The Average income is 42k before taxes. You can buy cheaper, but not in areas where you actually want to live. Germany has the lowest rate of homeownership in West Europe. It's crazy expensive for the average worker. Also added are taxes and additional costs like real estate agent, and fees for administration. So a 600k House will end up in the ralms of 670k to 700k.
I know families who can't really afford it, but still force through financing with just 1% repayment and a 40-year term well into their retirement. They would save money, if they would rent an appartment but buying a house is also a dream in germany for many, so they accept high prices.
@@danielfuchs1867 yeah it is still the dream for many. Also, it is a typical German thing. Complaining about high prices, but buying it anyway. I also know families who pay the high prices. When I ask them why the answer is always:"What shall we do instead"? It's like not buying is not an option. That's also why prices keep staying high, because enough people are still willing to pay them.
Your house might have been 95 000, but it's made out of cardboard. Our house are made out of brick and mortar and/or reinforced concrete. We also generally have basements, which I heard aren't necessarily a thing in the US.
I live in Saxony Anhalt and some places you can get a house for about 50k through the savings bank. Bavaria is conservative like Texas but expensive like California. But most Americans living here don't live in middle Germany. Nobody also wants to move to smaller towns and villages either because the internet some place is listed as like 6 MBS theres also very few doctors in smaller cities and lack of reliable public transportation and jobs
10:05 Upside-down triangle: "Yield". And it is the same in every country in Europe. You would prefere it to be spelled out. In which language??? Do you realize, that different languages are spoken here? In France, they have often additional text. Would you be happier with the information "Vouz n'avez pas la prioritée"? In Britain they have "Give way" instead (in addition to the sign of course). But we have german, french, italian, spanish, czech, slowakian, greek (different Alphabet!), serbian (different Alphabet, ukrainian (different alphabet)... And that is not half of the possibilities. Believe me, symbols are better!
English is an option. Everyone should know basic English anyways, and it's not like you need a deep understanding of a language to understand road signs. Symbols are great for the signs you encounter all the time, and yield is certainly one of those, but there's definitely some misc signs we could replace with text to reduce the amount of stuff you need to learn. Also, we're already using text signs in the local languages, which is ridiculous in modern times. Should all be English. Weirdly, the stop sign already has English text almost everywhere in the world, including Germany.
@@tornero5829 No, "stop" isn't a German word. Well, not in correct modern spelling anyways. "Stopp" is. Still, "STOP" is used in a lot of countries, even countries where the local word isn't even close to that.
@@yannickurbach5654 I didn't say it was a German word but that it means the same thing. I disagree that all signs should be in English, there's enough globalisation going on without having to eliminate all remnants of local culture and language. While it is important for most people nowadays to learn English, it's ridiculous to suggest that some 70 year old in let's say a rural town in Poland needs to learn it to understand signs in his local town. There are numerous apps and other things nowadays to help tourists translate anything they might need.
For 35 k€ you can buy a garage here in Munich. A flat can be up to 21.000 € per square metre (~ 22.5 k$ per shoe²). A house here is in between 2.370.137 € und 4.536.218 €. This is a little more than normal people can earn in a lifetime in this country.
I just did a quick check for my area here in Lower Saxony and you can actually get apartments for less, I think starting at 70.000 or even 60.000 Euros. The question is whether you really want to live there and/or how much you are able/willing to invest in renovations which might be badly needed for some of those apartments (same with cheap old houses here). In some of them you may be able to fit a queen size bed, though.
On top of that, even if you renovate you might still be stuck in a rundown building after that.... One of my teachers had that problem, he bought an Appartement in a house that was planned to be renovated but the plans were dropped, because the rest of the house (minus the 3 appartements that were already sold) got sold and the new owner blocked the renovation because he would have been required to to pay the lions share of it, so for years he lived in a house that looked like the war had just ended, with regular broken pipes, missing floor tiles and cracked walls in the hallways and regular rat infestation in the cellar....
Yes it is a "yield" sign. It doesn't need the text on it because it is unique in its design. This has the purpose, that also all other directions of traffic can identify it from just looking at the back of it and immediately know, this lane has to yield. This is also true for other street signs: - the stop sign is ab octagon - the sign opposing yield "you have the richtig of way" in certain cases is a diamond shape - the signs for one way streets are rectangles (like in the US) at the entrance and circles at the exit (to prohibit entry from the wrong side) - all other warning signs are normal triangles, which have pictograms on them, those can't be identified from the back, but they mostly are posted from two sides.
German "Führerscheinprüfung" is way differnt than the American drivers licence test. Maybe you want to react to a video explaining it? Also, this 1 Million dollars thing is realistic for a new house in Germany so naturally most can't afford that. Most likely due to taxes, materials and lots of regulations while building it. An old kne (30 years+) might go for around 500k. And apartment prices in big cities/universities are hell as well.
Depends on the place. For 300K you can get a ~100 year old townhouse/appartment house for 4 or 6 families renovated in the 90s including renters that bring in money. You just have to go to a 5 digit East Germany town. Or build a "town villa" there for 400-500K. Or a small, run down house probably not changed much since the young couple build it in the 60s or 70s for 50K if you can find the person who inherited it. All examples from my birth town when I loked out of curiosity 2 month ago. And if you come here where I live now, you can get 300 year old "Fachwerkbau" houses practically for free, you just need the money to basically rebuild them without violating Denkmalschutz ;)
@@steemlenn8797 true, the price difference is crazy. where i live the prices mentioned (1 million for a normal house, 500k for a shag) are pretty much the same, recently a friend bought a house for 60k. it's like 100km away and it definitely needs renovating (a lot) but that just shows how different it can be even though in somewhat close proximity (same bundesland too, bavaria).
He has mentioned ground tax which is to be payed to the local administration (Kommune) and which can vary accordingly. Depending on the local administration it has to be payed per month, per quarters of a year, per half of a year or annually. However there is a ground purchase tax set by each of the individual 16 states in Germany which has to be paid once at buying a house and the ground on which it stands. I think it's around 3,5% in Bavaria. The traffic signs are quite standardized all over Europe - within the EU possibly even by law. In Germany, where attending a driving school is mandatory to get a drivers license, you need to learn all signs thoroughly. You'll be tested about them twice - in a theoretical examination and in a driving test. During the driving test you get directions where you should go next. You won't get any other hints. You need to keep your eyes open to everything in front and at both sides of the car, and behind it sometimes as well. Failing to act appropriately at a yield sign can lead to failing the test completely - so you'd have to repeat the driving test.
I've once read, that Germany has a very high renting to owning ratio compared to other countries. This is in part, because tenants have a lot of rights in Germany, that tenants in other countries don't have. It's much harder to evict tenants and there are regulations on how you can raise the rents. If you rent an apartment and you pay your rent, you won't need to fear, to be evicted or to get your rent doubled. But I don't know about the laws in other countries, so I can't really confirm or deny this.
It depends where. Landside in eastern germany can be totally affordable. But for an average house in Munich you‘ll have to Pay 1.3-1.5 Million Euros. Plus Taxes Not realistic without Heritage
In germany you don't buy only the house you buy the property it's build on also. So prices can be different for kind of the same houses depending on how much property you have to buy also. And as a lot of people already said it's build and insulateted way different than american houses and yes it depends on where in germany you wanna stay. We have a property with 2 square kilometers of land and 2 houses (nearly 400 years old) build on. If we would wanna sell the price would be between 3 and 3.5 million Euro.
Keep in mind, prices depend much on the location. Not only the state, but also things like proximity to job opportunities, infrastructure ect. For example, most people don't want to live way out in the country side, because it makes life more difficult. People ideally want to live a 5 minute walk away from their work place, schools, doctors and shops. But that obviously not possible for most people, and such locations are expensive. Another thing about buying vs renting is, that owning property is by far not as cheap as the guy in the video says. Apart of the ground tax you have many more mandatory expenses. Plus the fact that you have to pay every repair yourself. And that can be a real killer, if you suddenly need a new roof, or a new heating or so. If you rent, you pay so much every month, no matter what happens. Its a more reliable expense somehow.
Also in Germany in contrary to many other countries you can’t deduct the interest and your expenses for maintaining the house from the taxes. Thats only possible if you are renting the house out as a landlord and therefore the laws are not incentivizing home ownership.
Making a video about house prices in Germany right now is kinda odd, since prices are way above what they'd normally be at. Especially because of the cost of building materials and builders. The building market for housing is unfortunately affected by basically all the criseses happening in Germany rn, from Ukraine War, to the skills shortage, to covid-related supply chain disruptions etc.
The high housing prices mentioned in the video are not really due to high construction costs, it is actually primarily the demand for housing in certain regions that drives these prices up. noone would pay high prices in east germany, even if the house was built expensive.
@@E85stattElektro Same in the north. Even in rural Schleswig Holstein where I lived until recently, housing prised doubled to tripled over the last 5 years.
There are super cheap and beautiful houses too in Bavaria, just not near Munich. My parents bought a house in Northern Bavaria in a small town near a little lake, and the whole house was just a little more than 100 000 euro. It has a nice big garden, cellar with oil heating, three big apartments on each level and 4 garages. And it is in a nice town. just not fancy but down to earth. One of their neighbors is actually American. :-)
regarding the street sign: That is a yield sign! Most signs around here do not use text, because 1. There are lots of people around that speak different languages, so everyone sticks to the shape and not text 2. The german equivalent for "yield" is "Vorfahrt Achten!", try printing that on in a readable way...😆
2:25 Actually he talks not about Bavaria as a whole, but mainly the commuter belt (in German: Speckgürtel = lit. bacon belt, where the wealth of the city flows to) of Munich, a few other big cities and the residential districts around the lakes of Upper Bavaria. Munich itself (and some areas around Chiemsee Lake) has the highest real estate prices in the whole of Germany, and the outskirts are now home to the middle-rich. Mostly the plots themselves make most of the price, but houses are also traditionally built to last - stone, concrete, if wood, then massive, and nearly no drywalls. That makes however construction also a bit more expensive. Property taxes have partly increased a bit since he made the video, mostly due to changes in legislation mandated by the Supreme Court regarding the base value determination. The procurement costs are generally a bit higher in Germany - there are also registration costs of registering the change in ownership. Also if you buy a house and sell it again within less than ten years you could be charged with speculation tax. Therefore people who plan to pursue a career by switching jobs and maybe moving to another city will mostly rather rent than buy, or they buy not a house, but only a condo which they can easily rent out if necessary. Buying (or all the more building) a house means you plan to settle down with your family for at least a longer period (e.g. until the kids are leaving school). And for a long time there was also a good supply on very nice homes to rent, some cheaper, some luxurious. (Due to demand for more space per capita, growing boom regions and gentrification of downtown districts that is not any longer the case in most cities.)
The prices in Bavaria are very high. A modern house ( around 1500 sqft, lower quality with a lot drywalls and strong ties, nailplates instead of traditional roof contruction) here in Brandenburg will cost you around 250.000 Euro to 300.000 Euro plus the price for the plot. It will become more expensive, if you want to have a full basement. This would add up to 50 % to the normal price.
0% downpayment on houses is how you get bubbles. I wasn't aware our banks were allowed to be this insane. Unless, of course, this is a case of the buyer having enough securities and finds having an unnecessary loan is a nice tax break or something like that.
You will rarely find them nowadays. They were more popular when the interest rates with downpayment were 1% or so, and the one without downpayment 4+%. Now with the interest rates going up while house prices barely coming down, they make less sense. Whoever cannot bring the downpayment usually will not be able to pay the additional interest anymore.
@@hmpeter the loans without down payment are crazy and were only possible if the prices always go up: § 490 BGB If the value of the property goes below the dept, you are responsible to pay for the differences (until 18:00 a clock in the evening: Nachbesicherung). Enough people lost their property to some schemes of lenders.
And, it is a German "Yield" sign. No writing neccesary. Just yield, everybody learned that. Okay, not everybody does obey it correctly. But I don't think that has to do with the missing writing.... 🤬
The house prices very much depend on where you buy it and of course the economy. My first house was about 250,000 Euros and I was able to sell it just a few years later for 300,000. Could probably have gotten more. Now I live in a different state in a smaller town. My current house was 140,000. And everybody told us that it was too much. But we had to buy quickly and from where we came from it was super cheap, with a massive garden in the back.
Agreed about the mortgage broker. There are a lot of different details and quirks to consider which depend on the bank. E.g. it can help a lot to plan the payment plan in such a way that one finishes right before the scheduled retirement age. Banks basically look at how you'll be able to pay the mortgage across the whole time, and if the payment plan extends into your retirement age then they consider your retirement to be a massive drop in income during your payment plan. Even if it takes just another two months or so to then pay off the mortgage they may deny the loan due to your projected income not being sufficient for the entire duration of the loan. It's stupid, but some banks work like that. Mortgage brokers know these things and what exactly each bank pays attention to and can adjust the loan requests accordingly.
The red-white upside down triangle sign means "yield" (US)/ "Give way" (UK/Aus). So yeah, it's pretty much the same sign. And yes, we learn every sign in our driving licence lessons. So everybody knows or should know the signs. I'm from Austria and we also don't have any text in any street sign. (there are only a few exceptions)
Thats because those signs we use in Germany are pretty much standardized and used across the majority of countries. And the reason there isn't text (there are exceptions) is just simply because foreigner wouldn't understand it anyway. Also you shouldn't have to READ what you're supposed to do (like the us handles street signs). Thats way too "slow" compared to just remembering the meaning of some shapes, colors and symbols.
A couple of years ago, family members of mine bought old houses that were inhabited by old couples previously. I think these houses were (much?) cheaper compared to for example newly built houses, but they also needed some renovations to be done - though I think they weren't in that much of a bad shape and you could move in right away. After all, people had lived there just a couple of weeks or so previously. But you can also buy basically run down houses, of course you need to put much more additional money and time into them then. My parents bought a new house that was to be built back then, about 25 years ago (I can't believe it's really actually been that long). It's a "Doppelhaushälfte", which literally translates to "half of a double house". It's basically two houses/ housing units in one house, or two houses built right next to each other so they make "one house". In my parent's case, their house was first, which meant there was a floor plate next to the house for some time, when we already lived in the house. The neighbours hadn't started building yet or hadn't even bought the house/ground yet. Anyway, I think my mother is just about to pay the mortgage off, if I'm correct.
Price ranges vary greatly in Germany. The rural areas and suburbs are usually cheaper than anything close to the city. It really depends on the state and town though. You usually need savings (so you can pay the additional fees) and a relatively high and stable income to get a credit for buying a house in Germany. Many people just can’t afford to buy a house anymore. The dream of the homeowner has shifted to a more independent pov on life, as well. If you rent, you can move quicker and change homes more easily. Also, incomes are rather low in Germany and prices for everything, incl. real estate, have increased horribly + you pay taxes and fees for anything possible in Germany. 🙄
20% own capital is mostly the standard in Germany. If you buy a house completely from a house producer company, they often offer also a finance without own capital as they have deals with financing companies.
Prices for houses in germany depend obviously where and in what condition but for 95k .. you won't find any and if you do, its remote af and needs a whole lot of repairs
House prices really depend on three things: location, location and location. You can buy really cheap houses in former East Germany, even in some places in the west. But the closer to any of the big cities you live, the more expensive it gets. I would imagine it's the same in the US. I think many people who buy a house in Germany have at least 20% as a down payment. The reasons why not everyone buys a house in Germany are many: First, renting is quite normal. Second, rents used to be quite low. When I was a kid we lived in a 10-bedroom (plus 2 bathrooms and kitchen) house plus a workshop and a double garage.. and it cost a grand total of 650 Deutschmarks/month. Mind you that was a long time ago, over 40 years in fact. And it was in the middle of nowhere. But still... We often don't have text on road signs because us Europeans can't read, we prefer looking at pictures. /s
Additions: a) If you buy a new property + new building directly from the developer, there are usually no brokerage costs. b) Real estate transfer tax: Depending on the federal state, this is an average of 6.5% of the purchase price c) Notary costs, other fees (land registry entries, etc.) again make up around 3.5% of the purchase price. Banks usually expect you to pay at least these costs out of your own pocket, so that the maximum mortgage amount is the purchase price + any necessary renovation costs*. *for example the built-in kitchen furniture = part of the house; at least according to building insurance. Attention: According to the applicable borrower protection guidelines (Basel II and III), banks are obliged to assess whether the requested mortgage can still be paid after the fixed-interest period and expected rising interest rates until it is fully paid off. Mortgage interest rates are currently around 3.5%-4% + 1% or 2% amortization. Around the mid 1990's the mortgage rate was around 7% + 1% amortization.
homes in Germany are typically smaller, a 2000 sqft home throughout Germany cost easily USD700k (USD 350/sq ft) - Homes in Germany are built completely different, almost all of them have basements, they are always built with concrete, bricks, mortar and rebar for all exterior and interior walls and ceilings ... the build quality is far superior and far more costly ....
In rural areas houses in Germany are cheaper than in the vicinity of cities, this is probably true everywhere. So his example refers to an area that is in high demand.
In Bavaria this would be in the south around Munich, of course the prices there are high. But i live in the most northern part of Bavaria and you can easily find older houses for 100k here in the rural areas.
Yield is the only traffic sign where the trangle points downward. We used to have a second one with a red frame and a dark blue field saying "HALT", the German word for "STOP". But when we adopted the US style stop sign our version was replaced. We have three signs that show you the meaning by the shape: 1 Yield, 2 Stop, and 3a priority road, a square in a 45° angle resembling a sunny side up egg. (3b is the same sign but it has 3 diagonal black stripes through it indicating the priority ends here.) We have very few signs with text. We have too many languagtes in Europe, but we all have the same traffic signs, except Ireland. They have a number of signs that are nowhere else in Europe.
In the US you have mostly 2 real estate agents for one transaction. A listing real estate agent and a buyer real estate agent. The seller pays both of them a commission of 3.5 % of the selling price. Real estate agents in Germany serve BOTH sides, seller AND buyer SIDE so they also get "both" commissions from seller and buyer side. I am a real estate agent in germany for 30 years and I would be highly exited if the german agents would work together the way the US agents do.
you can't get a drivers licence without passing a test on traffic rules and all the signs. getting a licence in europe cost thousands of dollars so you are carefull not to loose it from driving stupidly
Even inside bavaria the prices are vastly different depending whether it is located somewhat close to a bigger city and prices get just crazy within a 50km radius around Munich, and I guess that is where this guy is. If you are in the country side far from Munich and Nuremberg, e.g. the bavarian forest, then the prices for houses are almost the same as was mentioned for america.
Friends of mine are building a house in the countryside of Germany. In the end a house for 2 adults and up to two children, a nice small house cost them over 1.2 million €. The looked into some houses they would love to have (a little bit bigger, better companies building it) but that skyrocketed over 2 million €. In the village where my brother lives 30km away from munich, the price for the land alone is around 3 million, at that point you haven't even build a house yet. So yes, seeing prices like 250.000$ seems really cheap for somebody living in Germany. If you than think of how many years you will have to work to pay for that house, you start to realize that with many jobs even all the money you would earn wouldn't pay for the house so you have to live in a flat.
The sign (at 9:45) in the background means: "give priority the other driver" and this is not the same as "stop" because at "give priority" you don't need to stop the car completely instead: if there is no other car coming then you can slowly bend off.
Hello Ryan and good evening to you Thank you for sharing your reactions on so many topics. just to clear up some possible misinterpretations:(and bear with me, this will be long) the mentioned term "Property Tax" (3:15 min) can mean 3 things here: 1) Property Tax = as in "Vermögenssteuer" would be something that we in Germany do not have to pay anymore since a court ruling back in 1995 (I will leave the details out of it since it would take up too much time explaining). The property in this case would be all of your assets, be it in real estate or on your bank accout etc. 2) Property Tax = as in "Grundsteuer" (or real estate tax) is in the middle of a huge legislative and administrative change right now. The laws may differ for each state and within the states the percentage will differ by city. This tax allways used to vary and some say your average tax payed would be somewhere around 370 € to 800 € a year though there are some that have to pay a muliple of that amount. This tax is usually divided by four and payed every quater of the year. 3) property transfer tax = "Grunderwerbssteuer" is the tax you pay for selling/buying a house and again the tax depends on the value of the real estate and the percentage on the state and can be handed down to the municipality the property lies in. Thus the percentage varies from 3,5% (Bavaria) to 6,5 % (e.g. North Rhine-Westphalia) in 2023. looking forward to further videos 👍
The street sign calls " give way" . u have to stop at the end of this street (at a crossing road) with this sign and u have to wait and let pass all cars, they are coming from left (and right), before u can drive on the main street.
Aaand .. about the street signs, we use a uniform standardisation in europe, therefore there is almost never text on signs (maybe beneath it to clarify), so the signs look pretty much the same overall in europe, helps a lot (;
Here in Hamburg you pay in my street 270.000 Dollar for a 600 square food flat. But the same flat i can rent for 600 Euro per month. And to the purchase price there are many fees for notaries, taxes, etc. So it's not worth buying anything for me at all. Then I'd rather spend my money on travel, hobbies, etc.
Population density is a big factor all over the world. NYC -- very dense -- EXTREMELY high prices Rural America (or your smallish Evansville, Indiana) -- not very dense -- rather low prices
@Ryan Wass Nice you seen the sign (9:10)! But you didnt see the way the triangle is rotated. the corner is down, that is only at crossings, and this sign should remind you that the street you going to cross, is the main street. so you need to wait if a car is passing on that street befor you an cross it or enter it. If the triangles corner is up, you got all the different "text" or symbols inside, like you know it from amaerica. ;) have a nic one
in germany, if you want to build a new house. its around 3k for 10 square feet. thats the median price for a normal home, not much extras. if you buy it will be slightly lower but not a lot
There is a property tax on buildings and land owned. The amount is managed by the towns, so it is hard to predict. I pay yearly around €150 for a small 20 m² apartment in Bonn, and around €250 for a house in Neuwied with 160 m² and two garages on 1000 m² ground.
Just half way through but I wanna submit my numbers. I mean, I am not from "real Germany" aka Bavaria... I'm just from Bremen. I know, when Americans speak from Germany it is always just that conservative Freistaat in the south. In Bremen I bought a really nice appartment (60m² idk how many freedom units) 10years ago for 82k€. It is now a lot more worth, probably doubled. I pay for that little thingy 350€ taxes per year. So if that guy says a single house for over a million pays about the same in taxes... Yeah, we need a reform on that tax. A single house should have a higher tax than an appartment since it has more impact on environment, space etc... (imho)
Property tax is up to the municipality. The average rates in the state of Bremen happen to be some of the highest, surpassed only by Berlin. Bavaria is on the low end, together with Baden-Württemberg and Schleswig-Holstein.
How common is homeowners insurance in the U.S. and what is the annual cost to expect? In Germany, for a new building with 100 m² (1080 ft²), you pay about 150 euros a year for fire, water, storm and hail risks. In addition, risks such as earthquakes, floods and avalanches can be included. The older the house, the higher the insurance premium. I pay for my 200 m² house, built in 1936 and renovated in the 90s, about 350 euros per year.
In finland, larger cities like Helsinki an' tampere area, 2 room apartments price is like 120-240 000e. A Basic house with 3-4 bedrooms somenthin around 300-600 000 e. And of course those are warm In winter. Of course the bigger ones are much much expensive than that.
The thing with the sign is: What if the sign is covered in snow and the text cannot be read? So the signs are designed especially stop & yield, so you can tell just by the shape what sign it actually even without the ability to read the text on it. Therefore it's not necessary to even put text on them, because everyone just recognizes the sign anyways.
Currently in our area in SW Germany: • any house 500,000€ or less has to be totally refurbished. • Apartment (2 bedroom, ca 800 sq foot) 360,000€ and less would also need to be refurbished.
6:15 because you still need to pay for the house and salaries don't match the prices so most people are stuck renting unless they want to go into debt till the end of their children's careers. On the country side prices are more around 300k, but you still need to consider at least 100k for renovations, which is more achievable, but this is for old, run down houses, where the owner never bothered to do any renovations or upgrades in the past few decades. The majority of Germans rents, because they can't afford buying a house. But at least from what I can tell is, that families are getting a lot more support, so with two incomes you might be able to get something nice if you're not too picky.
What makes the houses so expensive, are the costs of the ground. I'm living in a quite small village in Germany near Stuttgart and here you have to pay 730 Euros per square meter. A square meter is about 9 to 10 square foot, I believe.
the triangle sign is meaning, that the car who is driving to the triangle sign have automatically look left and right to the other street. Because the Other Street ist the priority street. When no one is coming you can dive where ever you want. When someone is coming you have to wait. The signs are always the same on the other side of the Crossing: Meaning you drive on the triangle on the opposite Side is a triangle too. Left und right are the Priority sight and it is the same sign = a check sign with white an yellow inside. Tricky will be, when both cars are on the triangle sign. When both will straight on, its no problem, but when someone will go left, he have to waite for the car who will be straight on. Sry for this englisch, but this is the best englisch what i have got in this short time. Greetings from Germany
And that is the reason owing a house becomes handy. In order to afford this, selling or renting your property will allow you to afford your staying there since usually your pension + care insurance will not nearly cover the cost for a decent place. The average you' ll have to pay from your pocket in Germany is already over 2.500 Euros per month and increasing. Having that said, your income must be way over average to have this covered by your pension only unless you have some other financial sources.
Most of the workers here have at least 2 or 3 pensions which are backed up by the employing companies and we have a so called Care Insurance and Health Insurance and that are enough or maybe more to pay the stay at Home for the Aged. If ever those are not enough to pay the dues... the social welfare will settle the rest.
Actually the first picture of the video there were two houses with a little space in between but you couldn’t see because the guy stood there. Each of these houses will be around 1.3-1.5 million to buy. That’s mostly the basic price for a one family home with 2 kids. If it were one house the price would be more around 2-3 million. Nowadays with the increase down payments of single digit percents is nonexistent because of the risk. So people struggle to buy a house unless you inherited some money.
The house I live in isn't expensive on its own. The land it sits on is very expensive. There's no words on the sign because "Vorfahrt gewähren!" is a bit longer than "Yield". And people who don't speak German might get confused about what the words might mean and forget to yield. Important signs like "Stop" and "Yield" are pretty much standardized around the world. The octagon stop sign can be recognized even if you can't see the word. It's the only octagon. The yield sign is, as far as I know, is the only triangle with one corner at the bottom. You're supposed to recognize the shape even if you cannot read or are foreign to the language on the sign.
150K house in Austria, 300 m² with my own tower, 1300 m² "meadow", 1 hour to 3 different capital cities on 3 different highways around, right across the kindergarten, school and Sportplatz. I guess it has a value of about 250K now.
Why Germans Don’t Buy Houses | Feli from Germany She has good videos about the differences between the USA and Germany. She has lived in Ohio for several years.
it depends on the location and how old the house is. You can get a house that is due for renovation for less than half a million and then DIY renovate. But there might not be any of these houses up for sale where you want to live
I live in Bavaria and it´s the most expensive real estate market in Germany. I live near Würzburg a northern bavarian city and in Würzburg you pay for a standard size single familiy house roughly 1.3 million euros. In rural areas they still cost 500k.
Since I'd been looking at the prices recently in more central Germany, a (new built) 70-90 square meter apartment will run you about 350-450k list price on average, a 2020+ built house of about 100 square meter is going to run you 550k-700k list price. Building a new one is about as expensive, plus you need to get the land, which is quite often no longer actually sold, but leased to you for the duration of your life... Yes, let me "lease" some land for 130k, put a little house on it for 500k and then when I'm old I don't even actually own the land and if my children/grandchildren want to inherit the house, they have to renegotiate with the actual land owner for the lease (which is now worth more, since there's a freaking "free" house on top of it). Can't really sell the house since you don't actually own the land and tearing it down costs a pretty penny as well. Instead of dealing with all that, most just decide to rent in decent neighborhoods for about 10euros a square meter a month with comparatively decent renter protection laws and being able to easily move when you find a better job. The way salaries are at the moment, you can realistically look at buying something in your mid 30s/early 40s (assuming you're working off of 1 income) and at that point it's a question of why bother. Month to month costs aren't actually that much lower for owning, when you factor in all the costs involved for maintenance etc.. House market prices are pretty wack over all, a year ago they sold a normally sized 2 story house one town over, just got a small garden, not like a huge farm attached or something, for 1.4mil... and that house is built on ground that had to be excavated and infilled 9 meters deep to clear out stuff from the industrial train station that used to be there, also did I mention it was built 50meter from the river, on A FREAKING FLOOD PLAINS? Sorry, that's so aggravating to me... Anyway, current plans for Millennials seems to be to just rent until the generation that seems to actually own all those houses dies off, let the market crash down to actually affordable levels and then buy something in their 50s or 60s to die in.
Why not all people buy a house in Germany? Because you have to pay about 10% to 15% of the value at the beginning. But that's not for the house itself. You have to pay the estate agent (3% and more), conveyancer (~1,5%), land transfer tax (3,5% to 6,5% depending of the state). So these costs go on top of the price for the house. If you want a house that fits to you you have to pay 500k to 1M for it. You can find cheap ones but you have to pay at least 20k to 50k to renew the house (a kitchen can cost you about 10k and more) and then your property is very small. If you buy a house you probably have to pay for it for about 30 years.
According the traffic signs. Those are regulated by the "Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals". Keep in mind that there are a lot of languages (and variants of languages) in Europe. So when the guy is in Bavaria, the "yield"-sign would have to say "Vorfahrt gewähren!" in Germany. If he drove a few miles south to Austria, the official text would be "Vorrang geben!" (still German but Austrian-German). If he drove few miles east to the Czech Republic, the sign would have to say "Dej přednost v jízdě!" and if he drove 250 miles west to France it would say "cédez le passage". Within a 500 mile radius around Munich, Bavaria, you have 22 other independent countries (including the really small ones like Vatican City, San Marino, Monaco and Liechtenstein), 15 official languages (not counting the varieties of a language like German) and two different alphabets (latin and cyrillic)
Yes, it's a yield sign. Also annual property taxes may be lower compared to the US, but there's Grunderwerbsteuer, a one-time tax you have to pay for buying a slot of land or some property with a building on it. That's some added cost, along with some mandatory legal documentary that can get expensive too. Then there are different legal situations, like, the house isn't built yet, or is very old and falls under monument protection scenarios. All a lot of extra money, sometimes restrictions or ultimately limited use. With like 100K you can get a condo or apartment, but that's about it and you probably still pay mortgage for 30 years. For a lot of people it's just not worth it anymore. 🎉
in our area you can have a house for about 200k and it is quite good also. If you can only pay let´s say 100k you will get an old house and have a lot of things to fix. Bavaria is just simply expensive!
European street signs don't have text in them (except of the stop sign) because of the many different languages. There may be additional signs with text specifying details, and then it may become tricky
But he forgets that only recently the property tax was reformed. New calculation bases were used. In the worst case, property tax can become extremely expensive. In Bavaria, such prices are not surprising. But building a house has also become more expensive in general. In 2020, my neighbour built a house for 200,000 euros. By the time it was finished, the price had risen to 400,000 euros. And now many construction companies are going bankrupt because of the high interest rates. Buyers are in big financial trouble when they have to spend over 200,000 euros on flats, but can't move in yet and still have to pay the rent on their old flat.
Baveria and Baden Wüttenburg are quite expensive compared to other regions in germany. But house prices have gone up significantly in the last 20 years. Even in the boonies of east Germany houses cost 300k+. It's not a good time atm to try buying a house
In East Germany new Houses cost around 500000 Euros. If you are fine with Houses in need of Renovation, you can even find them in remote areas for less than 20000.
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The thing he said about mortgage brokers is true. They will find the best deal for you, while you don't have to pay them. They are paid by the bank after the contract is sealed.
Well, houses in Germany are not just made out of wood. Houses in Germany are made of concrete and bricks. Usually houses have a basement, which usually costs about € 100,000.00 already. Including the price for the compound and the rest of the house - take in mind the value of the location - building a new house in Germany will easily cost you a million Euros. That's why most people rent. But the organic food is cheap though.
Germany isn´t big enough to have a Midwest :) You´ll hear it usually divided in: the rich, Catholic, conservative South, the Protestant Sea-related North, the industrial West, and the poor, ex-Communist East. Plus ultra-liberal Berlin, which is kind of its own thing
Text on signs is overflow. You don't read the text on your phone, which app you open, you just look at the icon. Reading takes longer than recognizing a simple sign.
I've already noticed that Ryan has the attention span of a golden retriever. One little thing and he's off the track. But it's funny. Don't ever change!
The only non-modifier sign that has text is the stop sign, which actually uses the English "stop" rather than the German "stopp" Overall, the text is not necessary - you are meant to know the signs if you participate in road traffic, though I admit there are some rare signs I would struggle with. Especially pictographic modifier signs can be wild sometimes. Maybe also having text on the sign would be a benefit, but let's be real - Putting "Vorfahrt gewähren" on that sign probably wouldn't help much. It's just too long. "Yield", or even "Give Way" is much snappier.
Keep in mind that our houses dont fly away and are often more than 100 years old
Maybe except for example prefabricated houses that are made up of wood panels. That's the house my parents built and they always joked "if we get a tornado, this house will probably fly away".🙈
Peter Gabriel: "Here Comes the Flood" 1977 auch auf Deutsch
Witt/Heppner: "Die Flut" 1998
Juli: "Perfekte Welle" 2004
Eifel-Bronko: "An der Ahr, da ist es nass" 2021
@@danielmcbriel1192 Ausnahmen bestätigen wie immer die Regel. :D
My house was build 1640
yeah americans are like "oh a tornado took my house - no problem I just build it the same way again..." 🤣
here is more like "You saw the tornado yesterday? Yeah it took two roof tiles from my roof!" 🤣
Most street signs in Germany and other EU countries try to avoid text as much as possible, instead relying on pictograms. Reason is that they're faster to interpret and understandable to foreigners since a quick drive into a neighbouring country is very common in europe.
All of Europe (except Ireland) follows the Vienna Convention on Road Signs, so they're all the same; not just in the EU. The US's stance on this convention was as with any convention: In the UN: "This is great. We should all adopt this." At home: "We won't let the globalists tell us what to do."
My driving instructor also told me about the idea to make important signs recognizable, even if they are e.g. covered in snow. Don't know if this was a consideration, however this would dismiss text in signs as well. So one could argue that text doesn't really give any benefit especially to those signs, where it's actually getting important.
in Germany there is no space for your long words in traffic signs :-D
True
The irish ones sometimes say „GEILL SLI“ instead of yield! I love it!! Das ist soo GEILL!!
In Germany, we spend at least 12 hours of theoretical classes, 12 hours of practical driving with a licensed instructor, a practical test with roundabout 1000 questions we have to learn by heart before the test and a long driving test with an independent driving tester adding up to paying roundabout 2 - 3000 Euros to even just get our driving license. Yes, we know our signs even without script on them…
and a lot of street signs we already learned in elementary school - at least those that are also relevant for pedestrians or bicycle riders... for example also this yield-sign, because also a 10-year old kid on a bicycle must know who has right of way at a crossing, and who has to wait.
its a big ripoff and a scam, in the UK you pay like 350€ and their deathrate on the roads is 25% lower then in germany.
Ja und ich hasse das System.
2000€ für Führerschein und die Leute fahren so utopisch behindert da fragst du dich wie viel Bürokratie und Kosten für nichts hat DE als ganzes da wieder.
I am at 3.7k atm
What are you all doing for so long on the driver's license? I paid 700€ for the B-Class.
Two main reasons for high prices:
1: The piece of land You need to build Your house is very expensive
2: We build solid, with bricks and high-value insulation, not the US timber and Drywall crap.
I have been to US houses, one needs AC in summer and tons of gas in winter. YES, I know US energy is cheaper but one is for sure, energy prices will rise and rise.
The Americans think short-term, the house is cheap, and I will think about heating and cooling later.
Example: German high insulation windows, I bet I get 5 US windows for the price of one German window. What the US owner saves at the date of buying, he pays over the years for energy loss
Why will energy prices rise? If you mean in germany, you are right, but why in the US? And germans are the only ones who really care about environmental friendly housing; americans just don‘t care and probably never will get rid of their air condition and cardboard houses. And maybe americans pay more for energy over the years; it is still much easier to buy your first own house, when your young, without getting in debt, this is impossible in germany.
Aufn Punkt getroffen
@@chris_0018 Well, we at least don't start with crippeling debt, just because we went to university or had to go to the hospital... :P
A bit tonge and cheek, sorry, but there is some truth to it. Why should energy prices rise in America? How about inflation, supply and demand, corporate greed. Just some suggestions. Luckily Germans are not the only ones who care about environmental friendly housing, but it is concerning that so many Americans seem to not care indeed.
that we build solid has nothing to do with the crazy prices in recent times. prizes went crazy everywhere.
These are also important reasons, but the main reason is still real estate speculation and turbo-capitalism.
95000$? You get a garage for that in bavaria.
But not the ground to build it
add at least 20-25% on top for fees, taxes and all the other stuff -- average price of 1 m² of land (10 sq ft) in Bavaria is around 200 EUR and that's just the land. So, 20 times 20 meters, times 200 USD per m² is 80000 USD, add 20% for extra stuff, and you hit that 95000 USD. So, 65 ft times 65 ft is what you would get for your money.
for your Moped...
@@machinegod3000 Bobby Car
Well, come to a East German small or medium town, and you get a three-room in a renovated "Altneubau" for less.Or rent, like me, for less than 500€ (incl Nebenkosten).
Here in Southern Germany you can't even get an apartment for 95000$.
Maybe a dumster with a heater 😂😂😂
The cheapest, run down "for crafty people" apartment in my town is in the ads for ~$400.000 ...
I guess in most places in germany you aren´t able to find a flat for 95000$.
@@homesteadlegion4419 Yeah, a burning dumpster maybe.
@c.krueger9530 I wish. I live in former East Germany. There is no way to get a mansion, let alone a somewhat new house, where i'm from for 95k
Another reason why many Germans don't own houses are the laws and protections for tenants. As a tenant, depending on your contract and the time you spent in this apartment, the landlord will have a hard time to throw you out. The minimum notice period is 3 months. We also have a lot of freedom with rented flats to decorate and sometimes even change the building. If you move often, as a tenant you don't have a lot of organisational work. I have lived in rented apartments for all my life and never wanted to own a house.
Our "nice little small house" (about 950 square feet) in a smallish student town with not much land was 650.000€. This house is nearly 100 years old and will surely stand for another century.
The useful life of a house in solid construction is estimated at about 100 years, but also repairs like electricity need to be done much more frequently, so you will have to pay high costs if there is still a backlog of renovations in the house.
Yeah tell that to the Bavarian wooden houses in the Mountains that have 200+ years on their Back.
Its the modern houses that dont Go over 100 years. Its like with everything today. Its build to fall appart.
@@nocomment6421 i dont doubt the existence of old houses. I just said that big repairs are necessary to keep it good after such a long time, those old houses in bavaria also have been renovated, they are subject to the laws of physics just like everything
Obviously houses have to be renovated, that is only natural. Everything needs to be updated and fixed over time. Not just houses but also cars, planes, trains, roads, pipelines, high voltage power transmission and basically everything else. Even the human body needs some repairs from time to time, that's what doctors are for.
But a properly build house can last a long while. And there are houses in the US from the 17th century, just like in Europe.
8:38 traffic signs in Europe usually don't come with texts. we speak different languages every few meters and written text in one language somewhat counters the purpose of traffic signs being universally understood. the sign itself is the message.
Southern Germany is generally more expensive when it comes to real estate than other parts of Germany due to being comparatively "rich" because of its industries and beautiful landscapes (tourism).
On the other hand food is less expensive here. :) And Swabians in Baden-Württemberg, the state next to Bavaria, LOVE to own their houses and apartments.
Unfortunately it is not as easy as it once was !
in my Street there is a House (2or 3 stories)that had a water damage it was sold for only 5k in a Foreclosure i live in a small town with 20-30k ppl but the prices gone up from 25k to 150-450k for a one family home ,i think because of Biontech they have a Lab. here ...
prices are high everywhere nowadays.
The American approach to road signs amuses and terrifies me at the same time :) There is a worldwide standard regarding signs; it is based on the symbols and both the shape and the colors are coded so as to make it easier to interpret, the textual parts are rightly reduced to a minimum as there are a thousand languages and you cannot expect anyone driving to know the language of the country. The USA, as usual, are always the exception. Specifically that is a: "Give way", does not force you to stop like the "stop" (red octagonal) but still tells you that you are entering a road where others have the right of way. Triangles with a white background, a red frame and a black symbol indicate dangers. Circles with a white background, a red frame and a black symbol indicate prohibitions. Circles or rectangles on a blue background with white or red symbols indicate obligations. There are many other shapes or colors but these are the three most important.
Keep in mind that the prices for houses, flats and ground went crazy only in the last few years and it depends on the region where you try to buy.
if you wanna buy in Freiburg its a total other price than on the flatland near to the polish border.
True, a few years back they build a row houses near my work place here in Berlin, the english style, 2m garden in front, 6m in the back, each house just wide enough for a door and a single double window, they had 2 floors and a flat roof, these were sold for 284k in 2015.
They were located in what could be called inner city rim, it would take you 15 min with the car and 30 min with the public transport to reach the city center.
So you can get houses for a similar price... They will just be a lot smaller and uglier
The price increase between the mid-1980s and today's purchase prices is around four times. Example: at that time the equivalent of around €135,000 for almost 100 square meters of living space + 350 square meters of garden near the motorway, S-Bahn, bus, schools, etc. which costs today approx. €500,000 as a used property. For this price you can get just a new condominium with 75 sqm of living space in the same area**.// 1 sqm corresponds to almost 10 sq feet./
During the same period, salaries have increased on average only 2.5 times.
** Close to a major city and relatively well connected.
Yes, my parents bought a house (in the south in a rural region, 180m2 living space and 800m2 garden) for like 200k a couple of years ago and now it is valued at about 350-400k. A house in our street just recently sold for over 900k. Most of the value probably is the property on its own, since a 700m2 lot in our city is 250k right now.
@@manub.3847didn’t know they had Euro back in the eighties
A pretty important factor for the housing prices are the building regulations. A new home has to be really well isolated, they are build from bricks and last for decades and think they need to have solar power on the roof, the windows need a certain level of isolation. The rule of thumb is that 1m^2(=12square feet) will cost you around 5000 Euros to build, so a 200m^2 home is 1 Million Euros. There are cheaper places of course and if you are skilled you can do some of the building and renovations yourself, but that is rare. And land is also extremely expensive. The US is basically empty in the middle, the mid west has 10 states the size or half the size of Germany with 5 Millionen people each.
Regarding road signs: Those follow the Vienna convention and are implemented like that in most countries.
In Germany getting the drivers licence is far more difficult, than in America. You don't get it, if you don't prove you know all the signs.
By the way: translated into English, Germans call this sign "Give way".
Actual it means "Vorfahrt beachten" and is a red, closed "V"
Yes, house prices are high here in Germany! Not everybody can afford it, not everybody even wants to be a home owner.
We live in the Southwest of Germany, close to the French border.
Prices have always been high here compared to other parts of Germany.
We bought our house in the early 80s, when we were very young. My hubby is non- German. We did not have the benefit of rich parents, so we financed it over the years - not easy, but it worked. We sacrificed for it.
Looking back, our house and ground which we bought in DM, German Marks - the currency at that time, has now more than doubled and the currency is Euro.
We paid 200k Marks, now it is worth more than 500k €.
Our neighbour, moving in at the same time, was renting since then. He only made his landlord rich!!!!! This person must be laughing his head off!
We invested in the house and ground throughout the years, new bath rooms, kitchen, heating etc.
Next will be energy saving windows etc.
There is always something to do, but we love it here and nobody can tell us what to do or not.
That is a big plus.
We do not want it any other way.
Until about two years ago it still was very affordable to buy.
The prices were high, but the interest rates were very low. Paying a 30 years mortgage (plus maintenance, taxes, insurance etc) usually wasn't any more expensive than renting the same place.
E.g. 2.5 years ago my now- wife and i moved in together in one half of a duplex with 50% more living area and our own garden than our previous two separate apartments, but our total costs are pretty much the same as before.
We'll never have to deal with rent increases though, while our incomes keep increasing, so the relative share of our incomes that goes into financing the house actually decreases.
Overall it'd say that buying a house in Germany is cheaper compared to renting one, but one needs to be able to maintain a high cash flow. Much of that is basically from your left pocket to your right pocket (from your bank account to building equity), but it still can be difficult to maintain for many people.
Currently due to the increased interest rates one also needs a high downpayment.
The people don't buy houses because its too expensive. A 1300 sqft House here in my area (Frankfurt and surrounding areas up to 70 km away) is easyly between 600k and 800k. The Average income is 42k before taxes. You can buy cheaper, but not in areas where you actually want to live. Germany has the lowest rate of homeownership in West Europe. It's crazy expensive for the average worker. Also added are taxes and additional costs like real estate agent, and fees for administration. So a 600k House will end up in the ralms of 670k to 700k.
I know families who can't really afford it, but still force through financing with just 1% repayment and a 40-year term well into their retirement. They would save money, if they would rent an appartment but buying a house is also a dream in germany for many, so they accept high prices.
and then the roof is broken and they go bankrupt caiuse they cant afford to repair it..@@danielfuchs1867
@@danielfuchs1867 yeah it is still the dream for many. Also, it is a typical German thing. Complaining about high prices, but buying it anyway. I also know families who pay the high prices. When I ask them why the answer is always:"What shall we do instead"? It's like not buying is not an option. That's also why prices keep staying high, because enough people are still willing to pay them.
Your house might have been 95 000, but it's made out of cardboard. Our house are made out of brick and mortar and/or reinforced concrete. We also generally have basements, which I heard aren't necessarily a thing in the US.
I live in Saxony Anhalt and some places you can get a house for about 50k through the savings bank. Bavaria is conservative like Texas but expensive like California. But most Americans living here don't live in middle Germany. Nobody also wants to move to smaller towns and villages either because the internet some place is listed as like 6 MBS theres also very few doctors in smaller cities and lack of reliable public transportation and jobs
Don't forget the AfD.
10:05 Upside-down triangle: "Yield". And it is the same in every country in Europe. You would prefere it to be spelled out. In which language??? Do you realize, that different languages are spoken here? In France, they have often additional text. Would you be happier with the information "Vouz n'avez pas la prioritée"? In Britain they have "Give way" instead (in addition to the sign of course). But we have german, french, italian, spanish, czech, slowakian, greek (different Alphabet!), serbian (different Alphabet, ukrainian (different alphabet)... And that is not half of the possibilities.
Believe me, symbols are better!
English is an option. Everyone should know basic English anyways, and it's not like you need a deep understanding of a language to understand road signs.
Symbols are great for the signs you encounter all the time, and yield is certainly one of those, but there's definitely some misc signs we could replace with text to reduce the amount of stuff you need to learn.
Also, we're already using text signs in the local languages, which is ridiculous in modern times. Should all be English.
Weirdly, the stop sign already has English text almost everywhere in the world, including Germany.
Except stop means the same in German...
@@tornero5829 No, "stop" isn't a German word. Well, not in correct modern spelling anyways. "Stopp" is. Still, "STOP" is used in a lot of countries, even countries where the local word isn't even close to that.
@@yannickurbach5654 I didn't say it was a German word but that it means the same thing. I disagree that all signs should be in English, there's enough globalisation going on without having to eliminate all remnants of local culture and language. While it is important for most people nowadays to learn English, it's ridiculous to suggest that some 70 year old in let's say a rural town in Poland needs to learn it to understand signs in his local town. There are numerous apps and other things nowadays to help tourists translate anything they might need.
For 35 k€ you can buy a garage here in Munich.
A flat can be up to 21.000 € per square metre (~ 22.5 k$ per shoe²).
A house here is in between 2.370.137 € und 4.536.218 €.
This is a little more than normal people can earn in a lifetime in this country.
95,000$ You wont get anything with running water and room for a queen size bed in Germany.
I just did a quick check for my area here in Lower Saxony and you can actually get apartments for less, I think starting at 70.000 or even 60.000 Euros. The question is whether you really want to live there and/or how much you are able/willing to invest in renovations which might be badly needed for some of those apartments (same with cheap old houses here). In some of them you may be able to fit a queen size bed, though.
On top of that, even if you renovate you might still be stuck in a rundown building after that....
One of my teachers had that problem, he bought an Appartement in a house that was planned to be renovated but the plans were dropped, because the rest of the house (minus the 3 appartements that were already sold) got sold and the new owner blocked the renovation because he would have been required to to pay the lions share of it, so for years he lived in a house that looked like the war had just ended, with regular broken pipes, missing floor tiles and cracked walls in the hallways and regular rat infestation in the cellar....
Well, come to a East German small or medium town, and you get a three-room in a renovated "Altneubau" for less.
Yes it is a "yield" sign. It doesn't need the text on it because it is unique in its design. This has the purpose, that also all other directions of traffic can identify it from just looking at the back of it and immediately know, this lane has to yield.
This is also true for other street signs:
- the stop sign is ab octagon
- the sign opposing yield "you have the richtig of way" in certain cases is a diamond shape
- the signs for one way streets are rectangles (like in the US) at the entrance and circles at the exit (to prohibit entry from the wrong side)
- all other warning signs are normal triangles, which have pictograms on them, those can't be identified from the back, but they mostly are posted from two sides.
German "Führerscheinprüfung" is way differnt than the American drivers licence test. Maybe you want to react to a video explaining it?
Also, this 1 Million dollars thing is realistic for a new house in Germany so naturally most can't afford that. Most likely due to taxes, materials and lots of regulations while building it. An old kne (30 years+) might go for around 500k. And apartment prices in big cities/universities are hell as well.
Depends on the place. For 300K you can get a ~100 year old townhouse/appartment house for 4 or 6 families renovated in the 90s including renters that bring in money. You just have to go to a 5 digit East Germany town.
Or build a "town villa" there for 400-500K.
Or a small, run down house probably not changed much since the young couple build it in the 60s or 70s for 50K if you can find the person who inherited it.
All examples from my birth town when I loked out of curiosity 2 month ago.
And if you come here where I live now, you can get 300 year old "Fachwerkbau" houses practically for free, you just need the money to basically rebuild them without violating Denkmalschutz ;)
@@steemlenn8797 true, the price difference is crazy. where i live the prices mentioned (1 million for a normal house, 500k for a shag) are pretty much the same, recently a friend bought a house for 60k. it's like 100km away and it definitely needs renovating (a lot) but that just shows how different it can be even though in somewhat close proximity (same bundesland too, bavaria).
150K house in Austria, 300 m², 1300 m² meadow...
He has mentioned ground tax which is to be payed to the local administration (Kommune) and which can vary accordingly. Depending on the local administration it has to be payed per month, per quarters of a year, per half of a year or annually.
However there is a ground purchase tax set by each of the individual 16 states in Germany which has to be paid once at buying a house and the ground on which it stands. I think it's around 3,5% in Bavaria.
The traffic signs are quite standardized all over Europe - within the EU possibly even by law. In Germany, where attending a driving school is mandatory to get a drivers license, you need to learn all signs thoroughly. You'll be tested about them twice - in a theoretical examination and in a driving test. During the driving test you get directions where you should go next. You won't get any other hints. You need to keep your eyes open to everything in front and at both sides of the car, and behind it sometimes as well. Failing to act appropriately at a yield sign can lead to failing the test completely - so you'd have to repeat the driving test.
I've once read, that Germany has a very high renting to owning ratio compared to other countries.
This is in part, because tenants have a lot of rights in Germany, that tenants in other countries don't have. It's much harder to evict tenants and there are regulations on how you can raise the rents. If you rent an apartment and you pay your rent, you won't need to fear, to be evicted or to get your rent doubled. But I don't know about the laws in other countries, so I can't really confirm or deny this.
It depends where. Landside in eastern germany can be totally affordable. But for an average house in Munich you‘ll have to Pay 1.3-1.5 Million Euros. Plus Taxes
Not realistic without Heritage
In germany you don't buy only the house you buy the property it's build on also. So prices can be different for kind of the same houses depending on how much property you have to buy also. And as a lot of people already said it's build and insulateted way different than american houses and yes it depends on where in germany you wanna stay. We have a property with 2 square kilometers of land and 2 houses (nearly 400 years old) build on. If we would wanna sell the price would be between 3 and 3.5 million Euro.
Keep in mind, prices depend much on the location. Not only the state, but also things like proximity to job opportunities, infrastructure ect. For example, most people don't want to live way out in the country side, because it makes life more difficult. People ideally want to live a 5 minute walk away from their work place, schools, doctors and shops. But that obviously not possible for most people, and such locations are expensive.
Another thing about buying vs renting is, that owning property is by far not as cheap as the guy in the video says. Apart of the ground tax you have many more mandatory expenses. Plus the fact that you have to pay every repair yourself. And that can be a real killer, if you suddenly need a new roof, or a new heating or so. If you rent, you pay so much every month, no matter what happens. Its a more reliable expense somehow.
Also in Germany in contrary to many other countries you can’t deduct the interest and your expenses for maintaining the house from the taxes. Thats only possible if you are renting the house out as a landlord and therefore the laws are not incentivizing home ownership.
Making a video about house prices in Germany right now is kinda odd, since prices are way above what they'd normally be at. Especially because of the cost of building materials and builders. The building market for housing is unfortunately affected by basically all the criseses happening in Germany rn, from Ukraine War, to the skills shortage, to covid-related supply chain disruptions etc.
It is also primarily here in the South, since everyone wants to live here and so there are not enough houses to satisfy demand.
The high housing prices mentioned in the video are not really due to high construction costs, it is actually primarily the demand for housing in certain regions that drives these prices up. noone would pay high prices in east germany, even if the house was built expensive.
@@E85stattElektro Same in the north. Even in rural Schleswig Holstein where I lived until recently, housing prised doubled to tripled over the last 5 years.
There are super cheap and beautiful houses too in Bavaria, just not near Munich. My parents bought a house in Northern Bavaria in a small town near a little lake, and the whole house was just a little more than 100 000 euro. It has a nice big garden, cellar with oil heating, three big apartments on each level and 4 garages. And it is in a nice town. just not fancy but down to earth. One of their neighbors is actually American. :-)
95 thousand dollars for a whole house in America?? holy shit :D
regarding the street sign: That is a yield sign!
Most signs around here do not use text, because
1. There are lots of people around that speak different languages, so everyone sticks to the shape and not text
2. The german equivalent for "yield" is "Vorfahrt Achten!", try printing that on in a readable way...😆
2:25 Actually he talks not about Bavaria as a whole, but mainly the commuter belt (in German: Speckgürtel = lit. bacon belt, where the wealth of the city flows to) of Munich, a few other big cities and the residential districts around the lakes of Upper Bavaria. Munich itself (and some areas around Chiemsee Lake) has the highest real estate prices in the whole of Germany, and the outskirts are now home to the middle-rich. Mostly the plots themselves make most of the price, but houses are also traditionally built to last - stone, concrete, if wood, then massive, and nearly no drywalls. That makes however construction also a bit more expensive.
Property taxes have partly increased a bit since he made the video, mostly due to changes in legislation mandated by the Supreme Court regarding the base value determination.
The procurement costs are generally a bit higher in Germany - there are also registration costs of registering the change in ownership. Also if you buy a house and sell it again within less than ten years you could be charged with speculation tax.
Therefore people who plan to pursue a career by switching jobs and maybe moving to another city will mostly rather rent than buy, or they buy not a house, but only a condo which they can easily rent out if necessary. Buying (or all the more building) a house means you plan to settle down with your family for at least a longer period (e.g. until the kids are leaving school).
And for a long time there was also a good supply on very nice homes to rent, some cheaper, some luxurious. (Due to demand for more space per capita, growing boom regions and gentrification of downtown districts that is not any longer the case in most cities.)
The prices in Bavaria are very high. A modern house ( around 1500 sqft, lower quality with a lot drywalls and strong ties, nailplates instead of traditional roof contruction) here in Brandenburg will cost you around 250.000 Euro to 300.000 Euro plus the price for the plot. It will become more expensive, if you want to have a full basement. This would add up to 50 % to the normal price.
0% downpayment on houses is how you get bubbles. I wasn't aware our banks were allowed to be this insane. Unless, of course, this is a case of the buyer having enough securities and finds having an unnecessary loan is a nice tax break or something like that.
You will rarely find them nowadays. They were more popular when the interest rates with downpayment were 1% or so, and the one without downpayment 4+%. Now with the interest rates going up while house prices barely coming down, they make less sense. Whoever cannot bring the downpayment usually will not be able to pay the additional interest anymore.
@@hmpeter
the loans without down payment are crazy and were only possible if the prices always go up: § 490 BGB
If the value of the property goes below the dept, you are responsible to pay for the differences (until 18:00 a clock in the evening: Nachbesicherung). Enough people lost their property to some schemes of lenders.
And, it is a German "Yield" sign.
No writing neccesary.
Just yield, everybody learned that.
Okay, not everybody does obey it correctly.
But I don't think that has to do with the missing writing.... 🤬
The house prices very much depend on where you buy it and of course the economy. My first house was about 250,000 Euros and I was able to sell it just a few years later for 300,000. Could probably have gotten more.
Now I live in a different state in a smaller town. My current house was 140,000. And everybody told us that it was too much. But we had to buy quickly and from where we came from it was super cheap, with a massive garden in the back.
Agreed about the mortgage broker. There are a lot of different details and quirks to consider which depend on the bank.
E.g. it can help a lot to plan the payment plan in such a way that one finishes right before the scheduled retirement age. Banks basically look at how you'll be able to pay the mortgage across the whole time, and if the payment plan extends into your retirement age then they consider your retirement to be a massive drop in income during your payment plan. Even if it takes just another two months or so to then pay off the mortgage they may deny the loan due to your projected income not being sufficient for the entire duration of the loan. It's stupid, but some banks work like that.
Mortgage brokers know these things and what exactly each bank pays attention to and can adjust the loan requests accordingly.
The red-white upside down triangle sign means "yield" (US)/ "Give way" (UK/Aus). So yeah, it's pretty much the same sign. And yes, we learn every sign in our driving licence lessons. So everybody knows or should know the signs.
I'm from Austria and we also don't have any text in any street sign. (there are only a few exceptions)
Nearly the whole world has this signs - except US
I learned some of these signs - including this yield sign - in elementary school (because it is also important for bicycle riders)
Thats because those signs we use in Germany are pretty much standardized and used across the majority of countries. And the reason there isn't text (there are exceptions) is just simply because foreigner wouldn't understand it anyway. Also you shouldn't have to READ what you're supposed to do (like the us handles street signs). Thats way too "slow" compared to just remembering the meaning of some shapes, colors and symbols.
Doch, haben wir; auf den Stoppschildern. 😉
@@tubekulosehehehe, Klugscheißer 😂😂😂
A couple of years ago, family members of mine bought old houses that were inhabited by old couples previously. I think these houses were (much?) cheaper compared to for example newly built houses, but they also needed some renovations to be done - though I think they weren't in that much of a bad shape and you could move in right away. After all, people had lived there just a couple of weeks or so previously. But you can also buy basically run down houses, of course you need to put much more additional money and time into them then.
My parents bought a new house that was to be built back then, about 25 years ago (I can't believe it's really actually been that long). It's a "Doppelhaushälfte", which literally translates to "half of a double house". It's basically two houses/ housing units in one house, or two houses built right next to each other so they make "one house". In my parent's case, their house was first, which meant there was a floor plate next to the house for some time, when we already lived in the house. The neighbours hadn't started building yet or hadn't even bought the house/ground yet.
Anyway, I think my mother is just about to pay the mortgage off, if I'm correct.
Price ranges vary greatly in Germany. The rural areas and suburbs are usually cheaper than anything close to the city. It really depends on the state and town though. You usually need savings (so you can pay the additional fees) and a relatively high and stable income to get a credit for buying a house in Germany.
Many people just can’t afford to buy a house anymore. The dream of the homeowner has shifted to a more independent pov on life, as well. If you rent, you can move quicker and change homes more easily. Also, incomes are rather low in Germany and prices for everything, incl. real estate, have increased horribly + you pay taxes and fees for anything possible in Germany. 🙄
20% own capital is mostly the standard in Germany. If you buy a house completely from a house producer company, they often offer also a finance without own capital as they have deals with financing companies.
Prices for houses in germany depend obviously where and in what condition
but for 95k .. you won't find any and if you do, its remote af and needs a whole lot of repairs
House prices really depend on three things: location, location and location. You can buy really cheap houses in former East Germany, even in some places in the west. But the closer to any of the big cities you live, the more expensive it gets. I would imagine it's the same in the US.
I think many people who buy a house in Germany have at least 20% as a down payment.
The reasons why not everyone buys a house in Germany are many: First, renting is quite normal. Second, rents used to be quite low. When I was a kid we lived in a 10-bedroom (plus 2 bathrooms and kitchen) house plus a workshop and a double garage.. and it cost a grand total of 650 Deutschmarks/month. Mind you that was a long time ago, over 40 years in fact. And it was in the middle of nowhere. But still...
We often don't have text on road signs because us Europeans can't read, we prefer looking at pictures.
/s
Additions:
a) If you buy a new property + new building directly from the developer, there are usually no brokerage costs.
b) Real estate transfer tax: Depending on the federal state, this is an average of 6.5% of the purchase price
c) Notary costs, other fees (land registry entries, etc.) again make up around 3.5% of the purchase price.
Banks usually expect you to pay at least these costs out of your own pocket, so that the maximum mortgage amount is the purchase price + any necessary renovation costs*.
*for example the built-in kitchen furniture = part of the house; at least according to building insurance.
Attention: According to the applicable borrower protection guidelines (Basel II and III), banks are obliged to assess whether the requested mortgage can still be paid after the fixed-interest period and expected rising interest rates until it is fully paid off.
Mortgage interest rates are currently around 3.5%-4% + 1% or 2% amortization. Around the mid 1990's the mortgage rate was around 7% + 1% amortization.
homes in Germany are typically smaller, a 2000 sqft home throughout Germany cost easily USD700k (USD 350/sq ft) - Homes in Germany are built completely different, almost all of them have basements, they are always built with concrete, bricks, mortar and rebar for all exterior and interior walls and ceilings ... the build quality is far superior and far more costly ....
The average German house is tiny compared to the average American house.
Sturdy tho, these houses are built to last 300+ years, while American would call a house from the Civil War "historical"
In rural areas houses in Germany are cheaper than in the vicinity of cities, this is probably true everywhere. So his example refers to an area that is in high demand.
In Bavaria this would be in the south around Munich, of course the prices there are high. But i live in the most northern part of Bavaria and you can easily find older houses for 100k here in the rural areas.
Yield is the only traffic sign where the trangle points downward. We used to have a second one with a red frame and a dark blue field saying "HALT", the German word for "STOP". But when we adopted the US style stop sign our version was replaced. We have three signs that show you the meaning by the shape: 1 Yield, 2 Stop, and 3a priority road, a square in a 45° angle resembling a sunny side up egg. (3b is the same sign but it has 3 diagonal black stripes through it indicating the priority ends here.)
We have very few signs with text. We have too many languagtes in Europe, but we all have the same traffic signs, except Ireland. They have a number of signs that are nowhere else in Europe.
Just 95.000$, now 150.000$ for your house? *faints in German*
You should watch a more in depth video of House prices and house sizes of Germany vs. USA
In the US you have mostly 2 real estate agents for one transaction. A listing real estate agent and a buyer real estate agent. The seller pays both of them a commission of 3.5 % of the selling price.
Real estate agents in Germany serve BOTH sides, seller AND buyer SIDE so they also get "both" commissions from seller and buyer side.
I am a real estate agent in germany for 30 years and I would be highly exited if the german agents would work together the way the US agents do.
you can't get a drivers licence without passing a test on traffic rules and all the signs. getting a licence in europe cost thousands of dollars so you are carefull not to loose it from driving stupidly
Even inside bavaria the prices are vastly different depending whether it is located somewhat close to a bigger city and prices get just crazy within a 50km radius around Munich, and I guess that is where this guy is. If you are in the country side far from Munich and Nuremberg, e.g. the bavarian forest, then the prices for houses are almost the same as was mentioned for america.
Friends of mine are building a house in the countryside of Germany. In the end a house for 2 adults and up to two children, a nice small house cost them over 1.2 million €. The looked into some houses they would love to have (a little bit bigger, better companies building it) but that skyrocketed over 2 million €.
In the village where my brother lives 30km away from munich, the price for the land alone is around 3 million, at that point you haven't even build a house yet.
So yes, seeing prices like 250.000$ seems really cheap for somebody living in Germany.
If you than think of how many years you will have to work to pay for that house, you start to realize that with many jobs even all the money you would earn wouldn't pay for the house so you have to live in a flat.
The sign (at 9:45) in the background means: "give priority the other driver" and this is not the same as "stop" because at "give priority" you don't need to stop the car completely instead: if there is no other car coming then you can slowly bend off.
Hello Ryan and good evening to you
Thank you for sharing your reactions on so many topics.
just to clear up some possible misinterpretations:(and bear with me, this will be long)
the mentioned term "Property Tax" (3:15 min) can mean 3 things here:
1) Property Tax = as in "Vermögenssteuer" would be something that we in Germany do not have to pay anymore since a court ruling back in 1995 (I will leave the details out of it since it would take up too much time explaining). The property in this case would be all of your assets, be it in real estate or on your bank accout etc.
2) Property Tax = as in "Grundsteuer" (or real estate tax) is in the middle of a huge legislative and administrative change right now. The laws may differ for each state and within the states the percentage will differ by city. This tax allways used to vary and some say your average tax payed would be somewhere around 370 € to 800 € a year though there are some that have to pay a muliple of that amount. This tax is usually divided by four and payed every quater of the year.
3) property transfer tax = "Grunderwerbssteuer" is the tax you pay for selling/buying a house and again the tax depends on the value of the real estate and the percentage on the state and can be handed down to the municipality the property lies in. Thus the percentage varies from 3,5% (Bavaria) to 6,5 % (e.g. North Rhine-Westphalia) in 2023.
looking forward to further videos 👍
The street sign calls " give way" . u have to stop at the end of this street (at a crossing road) with this sign and u have to wait and let pass all cars, they are coming from left (and right), before u can drive on the main street.
Aaand .. about the street signs, we use a uniform standardisation in europe, therefore there is almost never text on signs (maybe beneath it to clarify), so the signs look pretty much the same overall in europe, helps a lot (;
Here in Hamburg you pay in my street 270.000 Dollar for a 600 square food flat. But the same flat i can rent for 600 Euro per month. And to the purchase price there are many fees for notaries, taxes, etc. So it's not worth buying anything for me at all. Then I'd rather spend my money on travel, hobbies, etc.
most apartments in multifamily homes are way more than $95.000 over here!
It is hard to buy Flat for 100 thousand Euro here in Germany or you can maybe find it in verry remote areas or in villages.
Population density is a big factor all over the world.
NYC -- very dense -- EXTREMELY high prices
Rural America (or your smallish Evansville, Indiana) -- not very dense -- rather low prices
and no infrastrucure, thats why its cheap
@Ryan Wass Nice you seen the sign (9:10)! But you didnt see the way the triangle is rotated. the corner is down, that is only at crossings, and this sign should remind you that the street you going to cross, is the main street. so you need to wait if a car is passing on that street befor you an cross it or enter it.
If the triangles corner is up, you got all the different "text" or symbols inside, like you know it from amaerica.
;)
have a nic one
in germany, if you want to build a new house. its around 3k for 10 square feet. thats the median price for a normal home, not much extras. if you buy it will be slightly lower but not a lot
There is a property tax on buildings and land owned. The amount is managed by the towns, so it is hard to predict.
I pay yearly around €150 for a small 20 m² apartment in Bonn, and around €250 for a house in Neuwied with 160 m² and two garages on 1000 m² ground.
Honestly i am surprised its so low, thanks for the Insight :)
Just half way through but I wanna submit my numbers. I mean, I am not from "real Germany" aka Bavaria... I'm just from Bremen. I know, when Americans speak from Germany it is always just that conservative Freistaat in the south.
In Bremen I bought a really nice appartment (60m² idk how many freedom units) 10years ago for 82k€. It is now a lot more worth, probably doubled. I pay for that little thingy 350€ taxes per year.
So if that guy says a single house for over a million pays about the same in taxes... Yeah, we need a reform on that tax. A single house should have a higher tax than an appartment since it has more impact on environment, space etc... (imho)
Property tax is up to the municipality. The average rates in the state of Bremen happen to be some of the highest, surpassed only by Berlin. Bavaria is on the low end, together with Baden-Württemberg and Schleswig-Holstein.
...and now, lets do all this calculation for buying a house in Denmark! haha :-)
How common is homeowners insurance in the U.S. and what is the annual cost to expect?
In Germany, for a new building with 100 m² (1080 ft²), you pay about 150 euros a year for fire, water, storm and hail risks. In addition, risks such as earthquakes, floods and avalanches can be included. The older the house, the higher the insurance premium.
I pay for my 200 m² house, built in 1936 and renovated in the 90s, about 350 euros per year.
In finland, larger cities like Helsinki an' tampere area, 2 room apartments price is like 120-240 000e. A Basic house with 3-4 bedrooms somenthin around 300-600 000 e. And of course those are warm In winter. Of course the bigger ones are much much expensive than that.
The thing with the sign is: What if the sign is covered in snow and the text cannot be read? So the signs are designed especially stop & yield, so you can tell just by the shape what sign it actually even without the ability to read the text on it. Therefore it's not necessary to even put text on them, because everyone just recognizes the sign anyways.
Currently in our area in SW Germany:
• any house 500,000€ or less has to be totally refurbished.
• Apartment (2 bedroom, ca 800 sq foot) 360,000€ and less would also need to be refurbished.
6:15 because you still need to pay for the house and salaries don't match the prices so most people are stuck renting unless they want to go into debt till the end of their children's careers. On the country side prices are more around 300k, but you still need to consider at least 100k for renovations, which is more achievable, but this is for old, run down houses, where the owner never bothered to do any renovations or upgrades in the past few decades. The majority of Germans rents, because they can't afford buying a house. But at least from what I can tell is, that families are getting a lot more support, so with two incomes you might be able to get something nice if you're not too picky.
What makes the houses so expensive, are the costs of the ground. I'm living in a quite small village in Germany near Stuttgart and here you have to pay 730 Euros per square meter. A square meter is about 9 to 10 square foot, I believe.
Is 73 USD per square foot. (exchange rate dec 2023)
the triangle sign is meaning, that the car who is driving to the triangle sign have automatically look left and right to the other street. Because the Other Street ist the priority street. When no one is coming you can dive where ever you want. When someone is coming you have to wait.
The signs are always the same on the other side of the Crossing: Meaning you drive on the triangle on the opposite Side is a triangle too. Left und right are the Priority sight and it is the same sign = a check sign with white an yellow inside.
Tricky will be, when both cars are on the triangle sign. When both will straight on, its no problem, but when someone will go left, he have to waite for the car who will be straight on.
Sry for this englisch, but this is the best englisch what i have got in this short time. Greetings from Germany
In my practical thinking, to rent in Germany is best because when we are old... we are all going to Home for the Aged if we are not dying before that.
And that is the reason owing a house becomes handy. In order to afford this, selling or renting your property will allow you to afford your staying there since usually your pension + care insurance will not nearly cover the cost for a decent place. The average you' ll have to pay from your pocket in Germany is already over 2.500 Euros per month and increasing. Having that said, your income must be way over average to have this covered by your pension only unless you have some other financial sources.
Most of the workers here have at least 2 or 3 pensions which are backed up by the employing companies and we have a so called Care Insurance and Health Insurance and that are enough or maybe more to pay the stay at Home for the Aged. If ever those are not enough to pay the dues... the social welfare will settle the rest.
Actually the first picture of the video there were two houses with a little space in between but you couldn’t see because the guy stood there. Each of these houses will be around 1.3-1.5 million to buy. That’s mostly the basic price for a one family home with 2 kids. If it were one house the price would be more around 2-3 million. Nowadays with the increase down payments of single digit percents is nonexistent because of the risk. So people struggle to buy a house unless you inherited some money.
The house I live in isn't expensive on its own. The land it sits on is very expensive.
There's no words on the sign because "Vorfahrt gewähren!" is a bit longer than "Yield". And people who don't speak German might get confused about what the words might mean and forget to yield. Important signs like "Stop" and "Yield" are pretty much standardized around the world. The octagon stop sign can be recognized even if you can't see the word. It's the only octagon. The yield sign is, as far as I know, is the only triangle with one corner at the bottom.
You're supposed to recognize the shape even if you cannot read or are foreign to the language on the sign.
thank you for your content❤️
150K house in Austria, 300 m² with my own tower, 1300 m² "meadow", 1 hour to 3 different capital cities on 3 different highways around, right across the kindergarten, school and Sportplatz. I guess it has a value of about 250K now.
Why Germans Don’t Buy Houses | Feli from Germany
She has good videos about the differences between the USA and Germany. She has lived in Ohio for several years.
it depends on the location and how old the house is. You can get a house that is due for renovation for less than half a million and then DIY renovate. But there might not be any of these houses up for sale where you want to live
I live in Bavaria and it´s the most expensive real estate market in Germany. I live near Würzburg a northern bavarian city and in Würzburg you pay for a standard size single familiy house roughly 1.3 million euros. In rural areas they still cost 500k.
Since I'd been looking at the prices recently in more central Germany, a (new built) 70-90 square meter apartment will run you about 350-450k list price on average, a 2020+ built house of about 100 square meter is going to run you 550k-700k list price. Building a new one is about as expensive, plus you need to get the land, which is quite often no longer actually sold, but leased to you for the duration of your life... Yes, let me "lease" some land for 130k, put a little house on it for 500k and then when I'm old I don't even actually own the land and if my children/grandchildren want to inherit the house, they have to renegotiate with the actual land owner for the lease (which is now worth more, since there's a freaking "free" house on top of it). Can't really sell the house since you don't actually own the land and tearing it down costs a pretty penny as well.
Instead of dealing with all that, most just decide to rent in decent neighborhoods for about 10euros a square meter a month with comparatively decent renter protection laws and being able to easily move when you find a better job. The way salaries are at the moment, you can realistically look at buying something in your mid 30s/early 40s (assuming you're working off of 1 income) and at that point it's a question of why bother. Month to month costs aren't actually that much lower for owning, when you factor in all the costs involved for maintenance etc..
House market prices are pretty wack over all, a year ago they sold a normally sized 2 story house one town over, just got a small garden, not like a huge farm attached or something, for 1.4mil... and that house is built on ground that had to be excavated and infilled 9 meters deep to clear out stuff from the industrial train station that used to be there, also did I mention it was built 50meter from the river, on A FREAKING FLOOD PLAINS? Sorry, that's so aggravating to me...
Anyway, current plans for Millennials seems to be to just rent until the generation that seems to actually own all those houses dies off, let the market crash down to actually affordable levels and then buy something in their 50s or 60s to die in.
Why not all people buy a house in Germany? Because you have to pay about 10% to 15% of the value at the beginning. But that's not for the house itself. You have to pay the estate agent (3% and more), conveyancer (~1,5%), land transfer tax (3,5% to 6,5% depending of the state). So these costs go on top of the price for the house.
If you want a house that fits to you you have to pay 500k to 1M for it. You can find cheap ones but you have to pay at least 20k to 50k to renew the house (a kitchen can cost you about 10k and more) and then your property is very small. If you buy a house you probably have to pay for it for about 30 years.
According the traffic signs. Those are regulated by the "Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals". Keep in mind that there are a lot of languages (and variants of languages) in Europe. So when the guy is in Bavaria, the "yield"-sign would have to say "Vorfahrt gewähren!" in Germany. If he drove a few miles south to Austria, the official text would be "Vorrang geben!" (still German but Austrian-German). If he drove few miles east to the Czech Republic, the sign would have to say "Dej přednost v jízdě!" and if he drove 250 miles west to France it would say "cédez le passage".
Within a 500 mile radius around Munich, Bavaria, you have 22 other independent countries (including the really small ones like Vatican City, San Marino, Monaco and Liechtenstein), 15 official languages (not counting the varieties of a language like German) and two different alphabets (latin and cyrillic)
Yes, it's a yield sign. Also annual property taxes may be lower compared to the US, but there's Grunderwerbsteuer, a one-time tax you have to pay for buying a slot of land or some property with a building on it. That's some added cost, along with some mandatory legal documentary that can get expensive too. Then there are different legal situations, like, the house isn't built yet, or is very old and falls under monument protection scenarios. All a lot of extra money, sometimes restrictions or ultimately limited use. With like 100K you can get a condo or apartment, but that's about it and you probably still pay mortgage for 30 years. For a lot of people it's just not worth it anymore. 🎉
in our area you can have a house for about 200k and it is quite good also. If you can only pay let´s say 100k you will get an old house and have a lot of things to fix. Bavaria is just simply expensive!
European street signs don't have text in them (except of the stop sign) because of the many different languages. There may be additional signs with text specifying details, and then it may become tricky
You can get "cheap" houses where you can get no work, and vice versa.
But he forgets that only recently the property tax was reformed. New calculation bases were used. In the worst case, property tax can become extremely expensive. In Bavaria, such prices are not surprising. But building a house has also become more expensive in general. In 2020, my neighbour built a house for 200,000 euros. By the time it was finished, the price had risen to 400,000 euros. And now many construction companies are going bankrupt because of the high interest rates. Buyers are in big financial trouble when they have to spend over 200,000 euros on flats, but can't move in yet and still have to pay the rent on their old flat.
Baveria and Baden Wüttenburg are quite expensive compared to other regions in germany.
But house prices have gone up significantly in the last 20 years. Even in the boonies of east Germany houses cost 300k+. It's not a good time atm to try buying a house
In East Germany new Houses cost around 500000 Euros. If you are fine with Houses in need of Renovation, you can even find them in remote areas for less than 20000.
The thing he said about mortgage brokers is true. They will find the best deal for you, while you don't have to pay them. They are paid by the bank after the contract is sealed.
Well, houses in Germany are not just made out of wood. Houses in Germany are made of concrete and bricks. Usually houses have a basement, which usually costs about € 100,000.00 already. Including the price for the compound and the rest of the house - take in mind the value of the location - building a new house in Germany will easily cost you a million Euros.
That's why most people rent.
But the organic food is cheap though.
Germany isn´t big enough to have a Midwest :) You´ll hear it usually divided in: the rich, Catholic, conservative South, the Protestant Sea-related North, the industrial West, and the poor, ex-Communist East. Plus ultra-liberal Berlin, which is kind of its own thing
Text on signs is overflow. You don't read the text on your phone, which app you open, you just look at the icon. Reading takes longer than recognizing a simple sign.
I've already noticed that Ryan has the attention span of a golden retriever. One little thing and he's off the track. But it's funny. Don't ever change!
The only non-modifier sign that has text is the stop sign, which actually uses the English "stop" rather than the German "stopp"
Overall, the text is not necessary - you are meant to know the signs if you participate in road traffic, though I admit there are some rare signs I would struggle with. Especially pictographic modifier signs can be wild sometimes.
Maybe also having text on the sign would be a benefit, but let's be real - Putting "Vorfahrt gewähren" on that sign probably wouldn't help much. It's just too long. "Yield", or even "Give Way" is much snappier.