Buying a House in Germany as a Norwegian Buyer: The Bid Is Not a Deal

In Norway, an accepted bid is a contract. In Germany you can walk away the evening before the appointment, and nobody can stop you.

Norwegian law binds both sides the moment the seller accepts a bid. German law binds nobody until a Notar, the public notary who runs every property sale, reads the Kaufvertrag out loud and both parties sign in front of him. A Norwegian buyer gets more room to retreat abroad than at home.

Tax to acquire a home, Norway against Germany

Where you buy	Rate (%)
Norway (dokumentavgift)		2.5%
Germany (federal default)		3.5%
Germany (top of the range)		6.5%

Why does nothing bind before the Notar reads the contract?

German law moves ownership in two steps, and neither is a handshake. The Wissenschaftliche Dienste, the research service of the German Bundestag, sets it out in its briefing Rechtsfragen des ausländischen Immobilienerwerbs in Deutschland, reference WD 7-3000-036/22: ownership passes only through the agreement of old and new owner before a Notar, called the Auflassung, and then the entry of that change in the Grundbuch, the land register. One detail matters if you are sitting in Oslo. Those declarations can be made only before a Notar established in Germany, or abroad before a German consular officer.

What follows is mechanical. An Auflassungsvormerkung, a priority notice, holds the buyer's place in the Grundbuch. The Grunderwerbsteuer is paid, the tax office issues the Unbedenklichkeitsbescheinigung, and only then does the Eigentumsumschreibung put you on the register as owner.

Norway runs the opposite way. Under avhendingslova, the act on the sale of real property, an accepted bid binds both sides and there is no separate contract stage to renegotiate in. The habit that travels with a Norwegian buyer is treating an offer as final. In Germany it is not.

How much is Grunderwerbsteuer, and who sets the rate?

Each Bundesland sets it, and the answer runs from 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 carries the federal default in one line: "Die Steuer beträgt 3,5 vom Hundert", the tax is 3.5 per cent.

That default is now the floor rather than the norm. Since 1 September 2006, Article 105(2a) of the Grundgesetz, the German constitution, has let each Land set its own rate. We do not print a per-Land table here, because no single official source we could verify publishes one. There is no national number to quote at you: check the rate of the Land the property sits in before you budget.

On a 400,000 euro home, 3.5% is 14,000 euro and 6.5% is 26,000 euro. At home, Kartverket charges dokumentavgift of 2.5% of market value at registration plus a fixed fee per document, so the same price would carry 10,000 euro. That is arithmetic on the published rates. Kartverket also grants an exemption on new builds leaving duty on the land value only, so ask the Notar what the German tax is assessed on rather than assuming the relief travels.

Does a Norwegian need permission to buy?

No. The Bundestag briefing concludes that German law contains no special substantive restrictions on acquiring property that attach to foreign nationality or to a foreign residence. No permit, no residence test, no nationality test. It does flag one formal wrinkle: particularities at registration can arise for married couples where at least one spouse does not hold German citizenship, so raise it with the Notar early.

Immigration is a separate question, and Schengen membership answers it: the limit of 90 days in any 180 that binds third country nationals does not apply to Norwegians. We took that apart in our guide to buying in Spain as a Norwegian.

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 to read: 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 of it. Section 656b limits that protection to purchases where the buyer is a consumer.

What the Notar does not read for you

The Notar checks that the deed is lawful and acts for both parties, so the Notar is not your advocate and will not tell you the building's reserve is empty.

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 you own and what is common in a flat, and the Baulastenverzeichnis recording public law obligations on the plot.

Then there is the monthly bill. Hausgeld is the 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 states it directly: 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 Norwegians 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: a 3.5% federal default each Land may raise to 6.5%, no nationality restriction, a buyer's Makler share capped at the seller's, and a purchase that binds only when the Notar reads the contract aloud.

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.