How common is buying a house in your country?

9 comments

1. In Italy it is very common to buy an apartment (or house) instead of renting. Generally it’s a goal of one’s life to “stop wasting money in rent” and buy.

   Housing can get incredibly expensive in the cities, even the not-so-big ones if they have some kind of attractive feature.

   For example mid-sized cities with important universities have an insanely expensive house market – Italian universities don’t have dorms, students rent rooms or share rental apartments, so if you own an apartment there you will have a steady income from students renting.

   Down payment is usually minimum 20% but you also have to pay upfront for the agency fee (3-4% + VAT) and the notary fee which is quite high. Also it’s really hard to get any renovation cost included in the mortgage.

   Mortgages without a down payment are available but they have higher rates.

   Usually the process is like:

   – identify the house or apartment that you want, either you see a posting on dedicated websites or you go to a real estate agency and they try to find you something.
   – go see it in person, make an offer that is lower than what they ask, haggle a bit and agree on a price with the seller.
   – you can sign a pre-contract in which you pay 10-15% and “lock” the house while you organize stuff with the bank, or while the seller tries to find another accommodation.
   – work out a mortgage plan with the bank. They usually require a permanent work contract and they will agree on a monthly payment that is not higher than 30% of your available monthly salary.
   – go to a notary and do an endless amount of bureaucracy with the seller and with a person from the bank. Pay an insane amount of money (usually 5-10k depending on various factors) to the notary. This money is not completely wasted, the notary does research and guarantees that everything is ok legal side.

2. 60% of the houses/apartments are bought, so it is pretty common. Renting is typically only done by people that cannot afford a house or are in temporary situations.

   Houses are very expensive and have been increasing like a rocket like in most of Europe, because of low interest and a growing and aging population.

   Another aspect that drives the prices here is that there is practically no down payment. You can take a mortgage of 100% the house price, so only notary and broker costs are to be paid at the time of transfer.

3. Pretty much it’s main goal for most young families, to have a place that you can call your own.

   Most typical, at least in the villages is to buy an old house and repair it. Prices are quite different, coz price of land can be a lot higher in some villages than the others.

   I know about one house, that is being sold for 70k €. It’s in the village near mountains with not that great public transport, so it’ pretty cheap. Repairs were estimated for at least 50k €. So together 120k €. Still quite cheap for this part of the country. In my village it would be at least 200k€(including repairs) since price of land is quite higher, due to our great public transport(we are in the middle of triangle between 2 small towns and large city) and gardens here are huge(you can easily build 2-3 houses in the gardens here).

   Most common way to pay for a house is ofc mortgage. For young people it’s usually 30+ years. Due to Covid, Energy Crisis, War etc…prices for everything skyrocketed. Building a house from scratch and taking a mortgage is almost impossible now(building materials went up a lot and also mortgage interests are super high now), unless you are well off.

   Process is quite simple, you will find a house you like(yourself or through agency). Go to bank and take mortgage, ofc you gotta have some money yourself, coz if you are broke you won’t get it. Than pay for house, get the paperwork done and start working on it.

4. The ‘Austrian dream’ is usually to build your own house rather than buying an existing one.

   However, in recent years prices for land *and* for building have gone through the roof so the option of building is available to fewer and fewer people.

   The process is usually that parents help out financially and the rest you have to get a loan from a bank. Doing work yourself when building the house can help you save money but usually greatly increases the time in takes to finish.

   Due the the increase in building costs (many) new houses are smaller today than they were 30 years ago. My parents built a house in the late 1970s/early 1980s that would cost some EUR 750,000 to build today – which would be unaffordable to the regular middle class family that we are.

5. I just bought a house! But originally we wanted an apartment in Helsinki, then later apply for a bigger mortgage and buy a house in a nearby city (Vantaa, Järvenpää for example). But we realized that the apartments we could afford in Helsinki would not be big enough for our family, so we started looking more widely even though it meant longer commutes and commutes we couldn’t do using public transport. We couldn’t get approved for a mortgage big enough for the kind of apartment we were renting, so we had to relocate.

   Now we have an actual house with a big yard that is about 45km from Helsinki center for under 200k euro. I think this is going to be a good place to raise kids. We don’t have to renovate, but eventually we want to update kitchen and bath and sauna. We decided to go for a 20 year mortgage though 25 was an option as well.

   One good thing is that we didn’t have to pay tax since this is our first time buying a house.

   Most of my friends are still renting, because buying an apartment is such a commitment and a lot of them can’t afford to buy in the areas they want to live, like Helsinki.

6. I think about 63% of people in UK own their home which has dropped massively to what it was. I would say it’s an aspiration for most, but also becoming more and more expensive. By the same token, renting is getting a lot more expensive. Housing is very expensive.

   The average house price varies a lot by region, average UK house price is £271,000 (327.000€), but average price in England is significantly higher than other nations. England is £288,000 (337.000€), Wales is £200,000 (234.000€), Scotland is £183,000 (214.000€) and Northern Ireland is £159,000 (186.000€).
   And then within that certain areas are a lot more expensive that others, most notably London is very expensive, average price is over £500,000 (585.000€).

   You used to be able to get a mortgage with a 5% deposit, but I think the minimum is now 10%. Then you have to pay “Stamp Duty” which is a tax, that can be up to 10% depending on the value of the property. Then you need to pay legal fees which I think is about £1,000 (1.170€).

   I think we spent about £20,000 (23.500€) to buy our house 3.5 years ago.

7. The home ownership rate in Bulgaria is 85% but the Bulgarian population is almost entirely urban thanks to its massive decline.

   Apartments are the majn type of domicile and most people inherit one (or more) and only people who can’t rely on inheritance or don’t like where their inheritance is resort to buying.

8. It’s extremely common here – in fact, there’s a little saying that people here are born with “a brick in the stomach”.

   It used to be quite common (ages ago) to just go to the bank and get a loan for your house. Easy peasy. I’ve heard rumours the bank would go up to 120% of the asking price.

   These days there are far more barriers to home ownership – notary fees are exorbitant, the down payment is increasingly out of reach, and you basically have to stay home with your parents until you can afford your first apartment.

   Heaven help you if you don’t have parental support, or if you want to live in a city.

   Bidding wars are increasingly common too.

9. A bit more local than entire country, but living in Berlin, Germany – buying? LOL 😂 😭 the prices are very high, even on the outskirts, I have no idea who can afford it at all, other than very very rich. Something like 80%+ of people in Berlin rent.