Buying a House in Germany as a Danish Buyer: No Permission Needed

Denmark decides who may own a Danish holiday home. Germany never asks where you are from.

That reversal is the first thing a Danish buyer has to unlearn, and the second is the price of the paperwork. German law carries no restriction on buying that attaches to nationality or to living abroad. What does change is the money: a Danish change of owner registers at 0.6% of the price, while German transfer tax starts at 3.5%.

Tax to acquire a home, Denmark against Germany

Where you buy	Rate (%)
Denmark (ejerskifte)		0.6%
Germany (federal default)		3.5%
Germany (top of the range)		6.5%

Does a Dane need permission to buy in Germany?

No, and the contrast with home is sharp. The Wissenschaftliche Dienste, the research service of the German Bundestag, examined exactly this question in its briefing Rechtsfragen des ausländischen Immobilienerwerbs in Deutschland, reference WD 7-3000-036/22, and concluded that German law contains no special substantive restrictions on acquiring property that attach to foreign nationality or to a foreign residence. Denmark restricts who may buy a Danish holiday home, under the erhvervelsesloven, when the buyer has no residence in Denmark in the sense of that act or fewer than five years of it, through Civilstyrelsen. Germany applies no equivalent test.

The same paper flags one formal point rather than a substantive one: particularities at registration can arise for married couples where at least one spouse does not hold German citizenship. Raise it with the Notar when you first make contact, not on the day.

How much is Grunderwerbsteuer, and who sets the rate?

Each Bundesland sets it, and the range is 3.5% to 6.5%. 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. Grunderwerbsteuer is the tax on the transfer of real property, and paragraph 11 of the Grunderwerbsteuergesetz, the transfer tax act, still states the federal default in a single line: "Die Steuer beträgt 3,5 vom Hundert", the tax is 3.5 per cent.

Since 1 September 2006, Article 105(2a) of the Grundgesetz, the German constitution, has let each Land deviate from that default. We do not print a per-Land table here, because no single official source we could verify publishes one. So there is no single German figure to plan against. Find the Land the property sits in and check its rate first.

Two sums for scale. On a 3,000,000 kroner Danish home the transfer duty is 18,000 kroner plus the fixed fee. On a 400,000 euro German home the tax is 14,000 euro at the 3.5% default and 26,000 euro where the Land charges 6.5%. Both are arithmetic on the published rates.

Why do Danish sources quote two different fixed fees?

They quote two different fees, and both numbers are correct. The Skatteministeriet rate table sets tinglysningsafgift, the registration duty, at 0.6% plus 1,850 Danish kroner to register an ejerskifte, a change of owner. Registering a mortgage over the property is a separate act at 1.25% plus 1,825 kroner.

The variable rate on mortgage registration was cut from 1.45% to 1.25% on 1 January 2026, which the Danish Tax Agency announced at the time, while the fixed 1,825 kroner stayed put. When a Danish source says the fixed fee is unchanged at 1,825 kroner, it is talking about mortgages, not about your purchase.

Where the advokat was, a Notar now stands

A Danish purchase runs with a lawyer at the buyer's shoulder. A German purchase runs through a Notar who is mandatory and acts for both sides, which means nobody in the room is representing only you.

The Notar drafts the Kaufvertrag, the purchase contract, and reads it aloud. Signing at that reading is the binding moment, and until it happens neither side is committed. Then an Auflassungsvormerkung, a priority notice, goes into the Grundbuch, the land register, to hold your place while the rest completes. The Bundestag briefing adds a practical constraint: the declarations for the Auflassung, the agreement on the transfer of ownership, can be made only before a Notar established in Germany, or abroad before a German consular officer.

The tax then gates the register. Under paragraph 22 of the Grunderwerbsteuergesetz, a buyer may be entered in the Grundbuch only once the tax office produces its Unbedenklichkeitsbescheinigung, the clearance certificate, and the tax office issues that once the Grunderwerbsteuer has been paid, secured or deferred. The Eigentumsumschreibung, the change of registered owner, comes last.

Who pays the Makler, and how much?

Since 23 December 2020 the buyer cannot be made to carry more than half. Sections 656a to 656d of the Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch, the German civil code, govern the Makler, the estate agent, on sales of a flat or a single family house. Section 656d is the one that protects you: where only one side engaged the Makler, an agreement making the other side pay is valid only if the engaging side stays liable for at least the same amount, and the buyer's share falls due only once the seller has actually paid and produced proof. Section 656b limits that to purchases where the buyer is a consumer.

What nobody hands you

Five documents carry the risk, and none arrives unasked: the Kaufvertrag itself, the Grundbuchauszug showing the owner and every charge on the property, the Energieausweis for energy performance, the Teilungserklärung defining what is yours and what is common in a flat, and the Baulastenverzeichnis recording public law obligations on the plot.

Two costs then recur. Hausgeld is the monthly service charge, and its size is driven by the Instandhaltungsrücklage, the building's maintenance reserve. Grundsteuer is the annual municipal property tax, and municipalities move it, as Duisburg did when it lifted residential bills by 32% in 2026, covered in our piece on the Grundsteuer ruling.

Where the numbers stop

Nobody counts foreign buyers in Germany. The Bundestag briefing says so outright: as far as can be seen, no statistics exist for the German property market on the share of foreign buyers. We cannot tell you how many German homes Danes buy, and neither can anyone else citing a primary source.

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: no nationality restriction, a 3.5% federal default each Land may raise to 6.5%, a buyer's Makler share capped at the seller's, and a registry that will not name you as owner until the tax office says the transfer tax is settled. Our guide to buying in Spain as a Dane covers the same jump from the other direction.

AiMYNDi reads the listing, the building's accounts and the legal paperwork for a specific property, so a charge in the Grundbuch or a thin maintenance reserve surfaces before the Notar appointment rather than after it. You can see an example of what a report looks like first.