I'm interested in purchasing a small apartment or house in Germany to serve a home base for future travels. Does anyone have advice for navigating the German real estate market? I'd be most grateful if you could recommend websites or other resources to help get my search started. Or, if you have personal experience purchasing real estate abroad, I'd be interested in hearing your advice too. Many thanks!
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CA, USA
333 posts
I posted a thread a couple of weeks ago regarding purchasing but for a house in the ROI.
Financing (which we expected) is proving to be the hardest thing. US Banks won't lend on foreign property because they cannot foreclose on it. Foreign banks don't want to lend because they don't have a way of authenticating data and it is a very risky loan in their eyes. Obviously, the best way would be to just pay cash.
The only way we have found so far to get financing would be to take an equity loan out of our existing home and then use the cash to buy the other home. We aren't sure we want to pursue that route right now although it would be the cheapest way to finance (interest rates around 5.5-6% fixed)