Buying a House in Germany as a Swedish Buyer: Meet the Notar

In Sweden a home changes hands on a document the seller and buyer sign between themselves. In Germany that same transaction is void unless a public official records it.

Chapter 4, section 1 of Jordabalken, the Swedish land code, concludes a purchase with a written document signed by seller and buyer. Germany requires that contract to be recorded by a Notar under § 311b(1) of its civil code, and the acquisition tax rises from 1.5 percent to at least 3.5.

Tax on acquiring a home, Sweden against Germany

What you buy, and where	Rate (%)
Sweden, bostadsrätt		0.0%
Sweden, fastighet, stämpelskatt on lagfart		1.5%
Germany, federal default		3.5%
Germany, top of the range set by the Länder		6.5%

What does a Notar do that a fastighetsmäklare does not?

The Notar makes the contract exist. Chapter 4, section 1 of Jordabalken states that a purchase of real property is concluded by drawing up a purchase document signed by the seller and the buyer, which must name the price and carry the seller's declaration that the property passes to the buyer, and that a purchase failing those requirements is invalid. No official appears anywhere in that sentence.

The German rule starts from the opposite end. § 311b(1) of the Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch, the German civil code, makes notarial recording a condition of validity for any contract to transfer land. § 13(1) of the Beurkundungsgesetz, the act governing notarial recording, requires the record to be read aloud to the parties in the notary's presence, approved by them, and signed in their own hand. § 17(1) of the same act obliges the notary to establish what the parties actually want, explain the legal reach of the transaction, and take care that inexperienced parties are not disadvantaged.

The waiting period runs before signature rather than after. § 17(2a) 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. So the answer to the Swedish question of when you are committed is: at the reading, with two weeks of draft behind you.

What does the Grunderwerbsteuer cost next to stämpelskatt?

At least twice as much, before any Bundesland adds to it. Lantmäteriet describes stämpelskatt as the tax due when you buy a fastighet or a tomträtt and apply for lagfart, alongside an expedition fee of 825 kronor that is payable whether or not the stamp duty is. For a private buyer the rate is 1.5 percent, charged on the purchase price or on the previous year's taxeringsvärde where that is higher.

§ 11 of the Grunderwerbsteuergesetz sets Grunderwerbsteuer, the German tax on acquiring land, at 3.5 percent and rounds the bill down to whole euros. Article 105(2a) of the Grundgesetz, the German constitution, then gives each Bundesland the power to set its own rate, which the Länder have had since 1 September 2006, and rates run from the 3.5 percent default 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.

The arithmetic on those published rates: a 4,000,000 kronor Swedish house carries 60,000 kronor of stämpelskatt plus the 825 kronor fee, while a 400,000 euro German house carries 14,000 euro at the federal default and 26,000 euro at the top of the range.

We are not printing a table of sixteen German rates, and you should distrust the ones circulating without a source. Only the 3.5 percent default and the constitutional power to deviate can be pinned to primary law. The number on your bill is the one published by the Bundesland where the house stands.

Is there a German bostadsrätt?

No, and this is the change that costs Swedish buyers the most. A bostadsrätt is a share in an association rather than the property itself, which is why Lantmäteriet's page attaches stämpelskatt to a fastighet or tomträtt and why a bostadsrätt carries neither stamp duty nor lagfart.

A German flat is real property. It is created when the owner declares the building divided into co-ownership shares, each tied to individual ownership of a unit, in a Teilungserklärung made to the land registry under § 8 of the Wohnungseigentumsgesetz, the act on apartment ownership. Buying one therefore triggers Grunderwerbsteuer and a land register entry, exactly as a house does.

What replaces the association's årsredovisning is a set of documents under § 28 WEG: an annual Wirtschaftsplan fixing the Hausgeld each owner pays in advance, a Jahresabrechnung settling it afterwards, and a Vermögensbericht stating the level of the reserves. The reserve to look for is the Erhaltungsrücklage, which owners must accumulate under § 19(2) no. 4 WEG.

What has to happen before the German lagfart lands?

The tax has to be paid first. 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 stating 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.

While that runs, an Auflassungsvormerkung under § 883 BGB holds your position: any later dealing with the property is ineffective so far as it would defeat your claim. The formal transfer agreement itself, the Auflassung, requires both parties to be present at the same time before a notary under § 925 BGB, and the Bundestag's research service records that those declarations can be made only before a notary established in Germany, or abroad only before a German consular officer. 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?

Not the buyer alone, since 23 December 2020. §§ 656a to 656d BGB reordered estate agent commission on flats and single family houses. § 656d provides that where only one party engaged the Makler, an agreement making the other party 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 the buyer's share falls due only once the hiring party has actually paid and produced proof.

Can a Swede buy at all, and how many do?

Yes, and nobody knows. The Wissenschaftliche Dienste, the research service of the Bundestag, concluded in its 2022 paper on foreign property acquisition in Germany that Germany has no specific substantive restriction on acquiring property tied to foreign nationality or residence, and that article 86 sentence 3 of the introductory act to the civil code puts European Union nationals beyond even the narrow reserve power the federal government otherwise keeps.

The same paper states that, as far as can be seen, no statistics exist for the German property market on the share of foreign buyers. Germany does not count them, so any figure you read for how many Swedes own German homes is not coming from the German state.

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 mandatory Notar rather than an agent, a binding reading with two weeks of draft in front of it, 1.5 percent plus 825 kronor at home against 3.5 to 6.5 percent there, no bostadsrätt equivalent, and a tax certificate standing between signature and the register entry. Our note on the identity rule that now gates lagfart for foreign buyers covers the Swedish side, and the Duisburg Grundsteuer ruling shows how far German recurring costs can swing in a year.

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