<story><title>Most Germans don’t buy their homes, they rent</title><url>http://qz.com/167887/germany-has-one-of-the-worlds-lowest-homeownership-rates/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>DocTomoe</author><text>Being German I want to pPoint out that the article leaves out one cruicial detail: Building your own home puts you into debt for quite literally the rest of your life. We do not like debt.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mto</author><text>Same for Austria. Then considering that you might change jobs every few years... and the jobs are mostly in the cities, where you can&amp;#x27;t afford building a house.&lt;p&gt;We live in a small to medium size flat for 380€&amp;#x2F;month, including some running costs. Buying it would cost roughly 250k. That just doesn&amp;#x27;t pay off. Most medium sized houses are about 700k€ in the region, with typical software developer wages at 2-4k€&amp;#x2F;month before taxes. So 1.5-2.5k€ after taxes. Now go figure how long you will be in debt...&lt;p&gt;And of course, people are older nowadays when they start to earn.
For example, my parents started working with 16.
I visited a technical school up to age 19, had to do a year of civil&amp;#x2F;military service, then worked 2 years to save some money, then did a CS bachelor. A bachelor alone is &amp;quot;no real degree&amp;quot; here, so also doing an MSc. Working while studying to afford the studying prolonged the studies a bit.. and in the end I started with my first real OKish earnings at age 28 when I started with my PhD. So... yeah. At the bank they laughed at my income when asking for a loan for a flat.</text></comment>
<story><title>Most Germans don’t buy their homes, they rent</title><url>http://qz.com/167887/germany-has-one-of-the-worlds-lowest-homeownership-rates/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>DocTomoe</author><text>Being German I want to pPoint out that the article leaves out one cruicial detail: Building your own home puts you into debt for quite literally the rest of your life. We do not like debt.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>buro9</author><text>Yup.&lt;p&gt;Germany has one of the lowest adoption rates of credit products such as the humble credit card out of nearly all Western nations.&lt;p&gt;Debt is not liked.&lt;p&gt;Edit: From the same site, the linked article at the bottom has the answer: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;qz.com&amp;#x2F;262595&amp;#x2F;why-germans-pay-cash-for-almost-everything&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;qz.com&amp;#x2F;262595&amp;#x2F;why-germans-pay-cash-for-almost-everyth...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;A better link: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&amp;#x2F;you-have-to-understand-germanys-long-standing-fear-of-debt-2012-7?IR=T&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&amp;#x2F;you-have-to-understand-german...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>