Buying a House in Germany as a British Buyer: The 7% You Skip

Buy a second home in England as a non-resident and the state adds 7% on top of every Stamp Duty Land Tax band. Buy the same home in Germany and your nationality, your residence and the number of homes you already own change nothing.

Germany taxes the property, not the buyer. Grunderwerbsteuer, the German tax on acquiring land, is 3.5 percent under § 11 of the Grunderwerbsteuergesetz, and each Bundesland may set its own rate up to 6.5 percent. North Rhine-Westphalia sits at the top of that range: Finanzamt NRW, the state tax administration, charges 6.5% on every contract notarised since 1 January 2015. There is no surcharge for foreign buyers, no loading for a second home, and no residence test.

Surcharges added for who the buyer is, not what they buy

Surcharge	Added to the rate (%)
England and Northern Ireland, additional property		5%
England and Northern Ireland, buyer not resident in the UK		2%
England and Northern Ireland, both at once		7%
Germany, any buyer, any residence		0%

Does Germany charge a British buyer more than a German one?

No. The Wissenschaftliche Dienste, the research service of the Bundestag, examined this exact question in a 2022 paper on the legal questions of foreign property acquisition in Germany and concluded that Germany has no specific substantive restriction on acquiring property that attaches to foreign nationality or a foreign place of residence.

The mechanism sits in article 86 of the Einführungsgesetz zum Bürgerlichen Gesetzbuche, the introductory act to the German civil code. Its first sentence switches off every surviving rule that restricted acquisition of rights by foreigners. Its second keeps a narrow reserve power for the federal government to restrict acquisition by ordinance, but only where Germans are restricted in the state concerned and foreign policy grounds require it. Its third removes even that possibility for nationals of European Union member states.

That third sentence is the one line where Brexit shows. A British buyer sits outside the EU carve out and under a reserve power which, on the paper's own conclusion, has produced no restriction at all. What Brexit costs a British buyer in Germany is time, not tax.

What does the Grunderwerbsteuer actually cost?

§ 11 GrEStG is two lines long: the tax is 3.5 percent, and the bill is rounded down to whole euros. Article 105(2a) of the Grundgesetz, the German constitution, then hands the Länder the power to set the Grunderwerbsteuer rate themselves, which they have had since 1 September 2006. Rates now run from the 3.5 percent federal default up to 6.5 percent.

On a 400,000 euro home, 3.5 percent is 14,000 euro and 6.5 percent is 26,000 euro. That is 12,000 euro of difference on the same price, decided by a state border. Both figures are arithmetic on the published rates.

We are deliberately not printing a table of sixteen rates, and you should treat the ones circulating online with suspicion. What can be pinned to primary law is the 3.5 percent default and the constitutional power to deviate from it. Check the rate published by the Bundesland where the property sits before you budget.

When exactly are you committed?

At one appointment, in front of a Notar, the German public notary who acts for neither side. § 311b(1) of the Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch, the German civil code, makes notarial recording a condition of validity for any contract to transfer land: a purchase agreement that skips it is not a weak contract, it is no contract. § 13(1) of the Beurkundungsgesetz, the act governing notarial recording, then requires the record to be read aloud to the parties in the notary's presence, approved by them, and signed in their own hand.

Nothing binds either side before that reading, which is also true in England before contracts are exchanged. GOV.UK's guidance on transferring ownership puts the English moment at the point where both sides sign final copies and send them to each other, after which neither can normally pull out without paying compensation. The difference is shape rather than principle: England spreads the exposure across weeks of parallel conveyancing, Germany compresses it into a single reading.

The German counterweight arrives before that reading. § 17(2a) of the Beurkundungsgesetz provides that for consumer contracts requiring notarial recording, the notary should give the buyer the intended text as a rule two weeks before the appointment, and that a shorter period should be recorded with its reasons. Two weeks alone with the draft is the nearest thing the German process has to a cooling off period, and it runs before you are bound rather than after.

What stands between signature and ownership?

A tax certificate. Ownership passes under § 873 BGB only on agreement plus entry in the Grundbuch, the German land register, and § 22 GrEStG forbids the registry from entering the buyer until the tax office supplies an Unbedenklichkeitsbescheinigung, a certificate confirming that no tax objections stand in the way. The tax office must issue it once the Grunderwerbsteuer has been paid, secured or deferred, on paper, with electronic transmission expressly ruled out. Until then an Auflassungsvormerkung under § 883 BGB holds your place, making any later dealing with the property ineffective so far as it would defeat your claim.

Two things a British buyer cannot do from home. The Bundestag paper states that the declarations for the Auflassung, the formal agreement transferring ownership, can be made only before a notary established in Germany, or abroad only before a German consular officer, and § 925 BGB requires both parties to be present at the same time: a UK solicitor cannot substitute. Nor can you search the register yourself. § 12(1) of the Grundbuchordnung allows inspection only to someone who demonstrates a berechtigtes Interesse, a legitimate interest, so the Grundbuchauszug reaches you through the seller or the notary.

Who pays the Makler, and what does a flat cost each month?

Not you alone, and not before the seller. Since 23 December 2020 §§ 656a to 656d BGB have governed estate agent commission on flats and single family houses. § 656d provides that where only one party engaged the Makler, an agreement making the other pay is valid only if the party who hired the agent stays liable for at least the same amount, which caps the buyer's share at half, and that share falls due only once the hiring party has paid and produced proof.

The monthly cost is the Hausgeld, the advance each owner pays under the annual Wirtschaftsplan required by § 28 of the Wohnungseigentumsgesetz, the act on apartment ownership, part of it funding the Erhaltungsrücklage, the maintenance reserve owners must build up under § 19(2) no. 4 of the same act.

How long can a British owner stay in the house?

Ninety days in any 180. Britain is a third country for Schengen purposes, so a British owner of a German home is bound by the Schengen short stay rule like any other visitor from outside, and owning the property confers no extra right to be in it. Longer stays need a separate visa or residence route.

What the German state does not know

Nobody counts foreign buyers in Germany. The Bundestag's research service put it plainly in the same paper: as far as can be seen, no statistics exist for the German property market on the share of foreign buyers. So we cannot tell you how many Britons buy German homes, and neither can anyone else.

We do not give buying or selling advice, and nothing here says whether a German property is worth buying. What the sources support is checkable: 3.5 percent as the federal default with each Bundesland free to go to 6.5, no surcharge for being foreign or non-resident, one notarial reading as the binding moment with two weeks of draft before it, and 90 days in any 180 as the ceiling on your own visits. Our note on how a court ruling moved Duisburg's Grundsteuer bills shows how far the recurring costs can swing, and our guide to the 24% tax British buyers meet in Spain covers the other market Britons ask about first.

AiMYNDi reads the listing, the financials and the legal paperwork for a specific property, so a thin Erhaltungsrücklage or an awkward clause surfaces while you still have the draft rather than after the reading. You can see an example of what a report looks like first.