New developments (Neubau) vs. existing buildings

Hi All,

I'm relatively new to the forum here - i've searched and found a lot of advice about buying vs renting an apartment. I just got married to a German national and we are definitely thinking about buying, but we can't make up our mind between a brand new apartment (Neubau) or an existing one (Altbau). Does anyone have any tips or experience in what the advantages or disadvantages of buying a newly constructed apartment vs say a 10-15 year old one? (We don't want to consider anything older than that due to the cost of renovating)

Any advice would be appreciated! Thanks!

Just some random thoughts, I came up with:
In a newly constructed appartement building everything looks shiny at first. It´s easier to get blinded by that and oversee the hidden problems. Buying an older appartement you can rely on the experience of neighbours or former renters. You can look into the statements of service charges to see how well insulation is working for example. On the other hand you have to make sure that there arent any bigger investments coming up, (maybe the old house needs a new heating installation soon and there arent enough accrued reserves for that).

I would say it´s all personal taste. I suppose a newly built place would have better insulated windows, more efficient heating system, etc.

Neubau vs. altbau did matter if you were to apply for eigenheimzulage money...but that is no longer offered since Jan 1, 2006.

10-15 years old does not mean Altbau. Altbau is a term used to refer to buildings built before 1949 (just fyi).

I am with Freising on not buying a completely new apartment. If there are any problems, mistakes that were made when it was built, you will not find out about them for a while, but if you buy an apartment that is already several years old, you have some statistics, you can see if any problems occur regularly, or if the apartment building is of good quality.

Is a building from the 1990s really considered an Altbau?

Edit: Thanks for confirming, Mariposa.

For years I lived in a very nice neubau (10 years old) - all the plumbing was great, the cellar was well kitted out with electricity in the cellar, a washing room with space for washing machine and dryer for everyone, it was well insulated for heat (keeping it in in winter and out in summer) and noise between the flats, centrally controlled electric blinds, lift, tiefgarage again with power outlet, really quite nice.

Now I've bought a flat from 1960 - and my experience of the process would let me do the same again. Buying neubau is very very expensive, does not guarantee quality, restricts your choice to what the builder will fit for you, ultimately is no less hassle for you, and for all the mod cons it's still cheaper to buy a solidly constructed older property and bring it up to modern standards. I'll write more on the subject tomorrow - I'm full of 'experience' both good and bad. Unless you really must live in a charming building full of character I wouldn't buy true 'altbau', which is pre-war, as the maintenance and issues could be horrible.

Thanks for the corrections regarding altbau :-) I didn't really think about it, just used the opposite to Neu.

I guess it makes a lot of sense. My husband says that a Neubau would be easier to rent in case we had to move away or something (he might - just might - have to move abroad for a couple of years for his job, but we would end up coming back here). But i guess that a 10-15 year old house would be much cheaper and I really prefer seeing what I am buying first - that is definitely an advantage.

I am a little worried about all the things that we have to check in the house we buy and how we should do it right.

Are there any companies or certifications that one can get - either the house owner or the potential buyer - to professionally check the house over for its condition and to know what we should watch out for, and of course to help the negotiations? Or do we have to do it all on our own?

Again, thanks a lot for all of your advice! It really helps. It's a nice feeling not to have to think about this and feel that you are going into something blind sided. My husband is a German citizen now (after about 15 years here), but he is originally a Sri-Lankan and so he also doesn't have any past experience to go by.

Here's some more information, and some numbers as far as I can remember them - first of all buying a flat in an older building will be much cheaper than buying a neubau. Why this is doesn't really matter, but there are many reasons and one is simply that many people believe the adverts - a nice cuddly Bob the Builder type puts up your dream home, fills it with ideal families just like you, and invites you to move in next door. It doesn't seem to work like that very often, at least I know many people with horror stories of neubaus that were badly built with leaking water and huge delays on completion dates. If you go for neubau then get a lawyer to read the contract, find out what it says you are liable for if the builder is delayed, and go there every day during the build to check what they're doing and how they're doing it. Check the sizes and locations of the communal areas like your cellar, check everything - chances are you'll be choosing from a plan for a building that doesn't exist yet so you need a very active imagination to think of everything that may not be what you expect and ask about it and get the answer documented.

So, we've established that for irrational reasons many assume the neubau is easier, but it is good value - after all you can buy a spanking new 100sqm flat for about 350,000 euro, and that's fairly good in the city centre. Wrong. Again read the small print. You'll spend all that cash and it will have a basic shitty kitchen in it, and a crappy basic bathroom - you can see the standard bathrooms fitted to flats by some large developers if you go to the showrooms of Meyer or Gienger in Munich, and they're crap and the builder will add a 50% installation surcharge. Should you decide you want something off the catalogue then it will be even more. Then there's the financing to consider - the deals offered on the glossy brochures are scandalous - Ok, they rig the repayments to be 1000 euro a month which appears cheap but really you're paying 99.9% interest and nothing against the capital sum, essentially a debt for life. Even if you go elsewhere financing a debt of 300,000 will be much more expensive than financing 200,000 even assuming you have some money to put up front. And then think of the tiefgarage - you will almost certainly need a place and this could be another 20,000+ euro. By the time the optional extras, fees and wotnot are added the cost of your dream home will be nudging above 450,000 euro.

Then there's the neighbours to think about - in a neubau everyone is new together and so the building's character forms while you're there which may be good as you can help form it, but may not. You may not know your neighbours before you move in, and you have no knowledge of their characters. Are they spiessig types who'll dive for litigation at the first opportunity? Will they be freaky scary types who harass you if you leave stuff on the floor outside your flat, or park your bike in the wrong place? Or throw your doormat away because they don't like the colour?

So, to buying an older building as an alternative, and by older I mean something that's between 20 and 50 years old. Naturally the building is standing so you can inspect its structure, and the TUV and Dekra offer a service to do this for a modest fee. You can do this yourself up to a point - look in the corners of North facing rooms for damp patches, especially in winter, look for signs of mold in the walls (flaky plaster is a good one), and repeat the exercise carefully in the cellar and the roof. Look carefully at everything that's visible - walls, pipes, cables - do they look well maintained? Look for cracks, bends, signs of structural damage, signs of water damage - in the end this is difficult even for the experts so if in doubt...

A very useful entity is the the group of other owners in the same development, and you want to find out as much about these as possible as they'll be your neighbours and will have to agree to your plans to make changes in any communal area or the external structure of the building. Get a copy of the Eigentuemerversammlung minutes (the yearly meeting of owners) and study this carefully. Look for problems, arguments that were not resolved, legal stuff. This is a record of the character of the building, who the owners are and what they want to talk about. You need their permission to do stuff in the communal areas so if they appear to be bickering about pointless crap then proceed with caution. You'll also want to find out what repairs were carried out to the building recently, and what repairs or modernisations are planned, the big one these days being the energy efficiency certificate buildings will need soon to prove they're properly insulated. You'll notice many buildings around Munich currently being insulated for this purpose. Check the 'ruecklage' or savings account for the building - can they pay? Phone the Hausvervaltung (the management company) or even better make an appointment and go and see them. Are they professional, helpful, can they provide you with plans & documentation for the flat you want to buy, etc.?

There's a lot more but I need more coffee first... Hope this helps...

Edit: For more reading search for my posts from this year Feb-June about flats, mortgages, financing, maklers and so on.

It helps a lot!!! Thank you so much. Am just printing everything out so i can discuss it with my husband this evening