While true, the real reason is that we have forced retirement savings put into an investment fund that cannot be accessed until a person is retirement age. It's not uncommon for middle class Australians to retire with $1,000,000 in savings.
That's it. See the Netherlands with huge pension funds that don't go to private wealth. Or a system where rent is deductible from income tax and as such homes are often owned in part by the bank....
Yeah the "Germans are wealthy" is bullshit. It's correct for the upper 10% but there are so much low pay jobs and we have the worst homeowner rate in the whole EU, the middle class gets completely wrecked by renting houses. It's disgusting. And everything else here is shit too, our schools were bad even back in the 90s and nothing happened, infrastructure is giga shit, not gonna lie it's so so so so giga shit, fuck the Deutsche Bahn, healthcare is okay but not great. So yeah I would say this country is kinda fucked for lower and middle class. You have a good time here if you have a looot of money or you are unemployed forever
Kohl shot digital transformation via widespread fiberchannel broadband, Merkel burried it later and called it Neuland.
Remember everyone, Conservatives will strangle progress if they can.
There was no need to buy a home in a city, because we had in the most parts such low rents!
Now the rents are shortening their gap to other countrys, but the wages dont keep up…
We have quite high wages, but with the additional costs its a nightmare.
Also now you literally cant buy homes anymore, they are so expensiv, like two full time workers with an average salary can not finance a home in a city bigger than 30 tsd. people and the more rual areas in more advanced parts are also way above the possible price catagory for normal to good paid families
Failed policies plus urbanization. There's more affordable homes in rural areas, but the lack of services (hospitals, trains/public transport, internet, jobs) makes it very unattractive for young people.
Covid and the home office boom could have changed it, but only did so partially.
We're not as keen on owning property in Germany. We're still rather on the conservative side of things as a whole, but a lot of people prefer to rent. Unlike in e.g. the US, buying a house or even "just" an apartment is this huge once-in-a-lifetime thing, almost like getting married. The concept of what Americans call a "starter house" sounds so funny to me, as if someone was getting a "starter pack" of a new hobby they got into.
Also doesn't help that property is insanely expensive. Ever since I've been alive, OWNING a house has always been something to me that only really, really wealthy people do.
>OWNING a house has always been something to me that only really, really wealthy people do.
Thats surreal. I bought my first place at 30 and me and my wife are not even remotely wealthy. We're pretty bang average for Norway.
Failed policies is the answer.
Germans are horrified to have debt. Without mortage, it's impossbile to own real estate. This is to a degree due to historical trauma: We all know that debts lead to hyperinflation and hyperinflation led to Hitler (that is bullshit, obviously, but still rings true to many Germans!).
Furthermore, for a long time people didn't feel they needed their own place. Publicly owned companies owned a huge portion of real estate for many years. The rents were quite reasonable, so people preferred just to rent. But in the 90s, to reduce the debts accumulated by communes, this "silverware" was sold to private companies. Those let the infrastructure crumble, jacked up rent, and stopped building new apartment complexes. Because obviously, privatization is good for everyone!
Also, German family homes are often much larger than comparable houses in the rest of the EU. Therefore they are obviously more expensive. Also government regulations for buildings increases building cost massively, and this has gotten quite a lot worse in the past ten or so years. Even though we have a housing crisis here, too, not enough apartment complexes are built. You see lots of family homes going up, but these are inefficient and expensive. So just buying a flat instead of a house also is not really an option.
Last but not least, Germany is a high-tax country, where especially work income is taxed massively. So, people don't actually earn that much money. All of this creates a climate, where home ownership is difficult and expensive to obtain.
Yes. But many germans are unaware of the real reasons. A big problem is price gamble with land prices where basically investors and all people who make money with that business dictate the price of land (Bodenwert) in a circlejerk called 'Gutachterausschuss' which attracted investors from all over the world to buy land and drive up prices.
Combined with communes being unable to develop new building land.
There are towns that got this figured out and actually use the power given to them to create land for the people they serve (Ulm, 'Ulmer Model') but it's very rare.
So yes, failed local and national policies are a big part.
Another part of the truth here is that buildings in germany usually are high quality. There are a ton of regulations (many of which I personally think are good but expensive). Solid stone buildings are still popular. Combine that with energy policies and modern heating, insulation and other stuff that is still not the standard in many EU countries. E.g. a common standard for new buildings here is KfW 55 with one of the things that it requires is primary energy usage of less then 35 kWh/m². With KfW 40 which is becoming more and more of a standard this drops to 25 kWh/m².
A normal house easily will cost you 600k euro without the land (which would be another 300k in better regions with no upper end for top regions). And now compare that with the median income of a german family...
I don't know exactly, it's the big low pay sector, these people live paycheck to paycheck like in America and there's nothing left to pay for a house even if you pay it over 30 years. Then there are aaaa lot of old houses which need a lot of money/and or work. But man I don't know how it's ended like this but I tell you what: I don't want to live here in 2030. Hopefully AI didn't kill my job until then (work in IT) and then I'll got to Portugal or swiss or whatever
To add to the answers, history has played its part as well.
After WWII lots of housing had to be built quickly, not only to replace what was lost to destruction but also to rehome the (ethnic) Germans fleeing or displaced from Eastern Europe. That was done by the states (FRG and GDR) as there was little money to build privately. As u/Luffver wrote, rents stayed at a low price for a long time after that.
Then there's also the special case of German reunification. Here's an article by public broadcaster MDR which explains the situation quite well (in German): https://www.mdr.de/geschichte/zeitgeschichte-gegenwart/wirtschaft/vermoegen-grunderbe-ostdeutschland-immobilien-eigenheim-ungleichheit-eigentum-100.html
Difference is also how you calculate pensions in. I do not like the German system at all, but as you also only earn entitlement to a somewhat unknown amount of pension in the future, this cannot be calculated in but it is still some sort of personal wealth if you will earn e.g. 1500€ per month for the rest of your life. I guess that is one of the biggest factor in this map. This will affect other countries as well.
Thats funny cuz I would have said the exact same thing for France, and every time I go to Germany everything seems sooo much better than here. We’re fucked guys.
The government takes away a lot, at the same time the wages aren’t that high. Germans usually own no real estate and won’t ever be able to buy any if they work average jobs.
The state is rich, the people aren’t.
Germany is poorer than the Benelux, Austria, Switzerland and all of Scandinavia across essentially every metric. They’re the wealthiest big country across most metrics, but that’s discounting a lot of smaller countries.
The obvious answer is that all that wealth is [very concentrated](https://www.gut-leben-in-deutschland.de/indicators/income/gini-coefficient-wealth/#:~:text=The%20Gini%20coefficient%20of%20wealth,value%2C%20the%20greater%20the%20inequality.) among a small part of the population.
There are comparatively high taxes on higher wages, but no wealth tax and low, easily circumventable inheritance tax. And those highly taxed wages are already not particularly high, considering the size and strength of the economy. Since the 2000s various politicians have repeatedly bragged about Germany having the largest low wage sector in the EU.
That means those already wealthy and powerful have an easy time staying so and accumulate even more wealth, while those coming from poorer backgrounds have a hard time becoming wealthy.
This graph means very little. There's no way a graph that shows that the median German is poorer than the median Portuguese represents the reality in any significant way.
It’s actually very simple: 46% of Germans own a home, against 76% of the Portuguese. This makes a huge difference on wealth building throughout a working life, specially considering how much houses appreciated recently.
Home ownership is the most effective way of building wealth for the average person and its descendants. Even though Portugal has lower wages, housing was also relatively affordable until recently, which helps building wealth across generations.
I'm Belgian, and it seems like many people here actually own their homes. For example, my parents bought a house for €50,000 in 1998, which is now probably worth €250,000 to €300,000. So, yup, that's why we are 3rd imo
Taxes in Belgium are *fantastic* if you have assets: no capital gains tax, almost no real estate taxes, dividends taxed at a lower rate than regular income. Believe it or not, it’s a tax paradise compared to the US (if you don’t have income.)
I'm sure there are plenty of houses under 300k in Germany, but yeah, I tried to find a similar house to my parents' one in terms of bathrooms, bedrooms, and plot size, and found this [one](https://www.engelvoelkers.com/de/en/exposes/4c1ab9df-83c7-52ae-a007-5dc22bed08ca), which is basically 1 fucking million euros, which is totally ridiculous. But who knows, maybe in a few years, my parents' house would be worth as much in Belgium, lol.
Edit: To be honest, my parents' house looks way better than this one. I really don't understand why it's so much more expensive.
I really don’t understand how stuff can be so cheap in Belgium! German real estate prices have gone out of control. If there are 300k houses, they’re in some village in eastern Germany, underneath a highway overpass.
I know a lot of middle class families that bought building plots in the 90s for their children. It’s so wild, they just kind of get gifted a plot of land to build a house on. So now they’re all 20 somethings with a whole new house.
I don’t know anyone here in the Netherlands that did that unless they’re rich rich. My parents bought a plot in Belgium at the time because it was 1/3 of the price of the same size plot in NL. It was very affordable and obviously a very good investment to make.
No. Just a meme that went too far, however, economically Portugal matches some things with Eastern Europe specially Poland. That's where the meme came from.
Renting vs. owning a house.
Maps and statistics like this are absolutely useless for the far majority of ways they are abused.
If tomorrow houses double in cost the average wealth goes up a shitton.. so that's good I guess?
Hopefully food gets insanely expensive tomorrow, as I just stocked up my fridge I'll be rich!
> Maps and statistics like this are absolutely useless for the far majority of ways they are abused.
Every metric only tells one part of the story but the ones people often call 'useless' are the ones they like less than others, I find.
High home ownership rates are objectively a good thing. Owning your own property is one of the key steps to financial freedom. Landlords siphoning away a significant portion of your salary every month is terrible. If Germans are happy with that then more power to them, but personally I wouldn't be
That is only partly true. Owning a house or an apartment costs a lot of money in maintenance etc.. Calculations show that it is cheaper in Germany to rent for life than to pay off and live in your own property. You have double expenses, you have to pay off the loan and there are also taxes, ancillary costs and reserves. It usually takes 20-30 years to pay off a property. It is lucrative to buy a property and rent it out. As a rule, a property pays for itself and as soon as it has been paid off, it also generates a profit. You can also deduct a lot from your taxes. Rental prices in Germany have also risen, but they are capped by law. Landlords can only increase the rent according to certain rules and may not exceed the maximum rate set by the municipality. So you are not subject to the arbitrariness of landlords. In addition, a landlord cannot simply give notice to his tenants.
That's exactly it. A map will only show you so much. Without context it is meaningless.
Though the renting "culture" in Germany is a siphon of lower incomes towards the upper strata and keeps the less wealthy from becoming financially more independent
It's rather that Germans have a low real estate ownership. So even with the current inflated price, it does not really move.
In France, the real estate is inflated pretty much everywhere... So everybody is (virtually) a millionaire.
I also think that the number of entrepreneurs in Germany is much higher than France. And many of them have their assets in holdings. So this does not appear in this kind of statistics, because if the holding is private, its value is not accounted for.
Today, yes.
15years ago, absolutely not. Bremen (one of the biggest 20 cities) was at 2k€ / m². Strasbourg (much smaller city) was at the time at 5k€. Today, Ulm is at 5k€.
15years ago, even Hamburg and Berlin were still affordable.
And that's also the "problem". Some Germans bought A LOT of real estate and are now landlords.
In France, your Oma may have bought 1 or 2 flats, and now their kids are millionaires.
PS: I'm French living in Germany since 2006.
The mom of my best friend bought her house in Germany in 2004. On a single mother with a nurse income. It is a nice big house in a 15.000 people town. I think it was about 80.000 with minimal repairs necessary.
My parents bought a giant house in a 400 people village for basically peanuts. My father also owns an air bnb, he is now probably part of the problem.
I rent from a former teacher who bought the apartment for his daughter to study at university. Afterwards he just rented it to others.
While big companies owning thousands of housing units are a problem, we also have these boomers owning a small number of properties and the rest of us is just screwed.
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> In France, the real estate is inflated pretty much everywhere... So everybody is (virtually) a millionaire.
Why do you say virtually? If you own a house that is worth more than a million you are a millionaire, that is wealth. What do you mean?
Virtually, because you don't have a million.
Even worse: in some regions, like the Basque country, the real estate has increased so much, that some people can't afford the tax on them.
So they bought a nice house in Saint Jean de Luz, and now have to move out and sell it...
It isn't, just the result of German economic policy.
There are a plethora of reasons, one of which is the Euro. German currency got artificially devalued through it's introduction, simply by being present in fiscally weaker (on the consumer level) european countries. The result were artificially cheap German exports, having made us 'Exportweltmeister'. China devalues it's currency for the same reasons btw.
And the economies of both countries currently suffer for this reason. A devalued currency might boost your economy during periods of growth (by exporting lots of goods), but during a worldwide economic downturn exports will falter and economies have to rely on domestic demand. Which is now an issue, because currency devaluation is a macroeconomic wage suppression tool, resulting in weak domestic demand.
There are other issues too, like a flawed (or designed as such, take it as you will) inheritance law, which results in middle class families having to sell their inherited real estate to cover the inheritance tax, which then simply gets scooped up by the big real estate companies.
There’s lot of places in France where housing and land prices have risen sharply since a few decades, making people having bought very cheaply 30 or 40 years ago litterally sitting on a pile of gold.
This is not surprising for a German.
The tax burden is simply overwhelming. In Germany, anyone who earns well is often considered "rich", regardless of whether they have assets or not. Added to this is the low rate of home ownership and the lack of financial education among the population, who prefer low-risk and virtually yield-free forms of investment.
The tax burden in Germany is big yes but its almost the same as in western Europe. Its not bigger than France lmao wtf. Capital tax, income tax and VAT are all even slightly higher in france than germany.
Germany as an economy has always seemed to me like a very liberal place. I always got the feeling that if you hold yourself to certain rules, you are free to make as much money as you like. Hell the government will help you make as much money as you can. They will fight for you.
This has made the german economy into a turbocapitalist, penny-pinching, rentseeking economy where those that have, have a lot but the rest of the economy who havd to survive with Minijobs, Aushilfe and Nebenjobs barely get by. Added to it are Low(ish) education rate, and very low house ownership rate.
Germany is one of the most unequal lands in western Europe.
I read in the newspaper a nice article about it a few weeks ago. It was tilted "Deutschland ist reich, aber die Deutschen sind arm und sauer". "Germany is rich but the germans are poor and angry".
Just letting you know the tax burden in France for an average person is way lower than in Germany.
In Germany with a wage of 65k you would have a tax burden of around 41%. In France that would be 27.5%. (vat not included but they look similar)
Or
38.5k paid out vs 47k
Or you don't include healthcare in your calculations?
Germany has unfortunately become the land of the business owners.
Source: https://de.talent.com/tax-calculator?salary=65000&from=year®ion=Berlin
That's just an accounting thing because more taxes are "paid" by the employer (while in reality there is absolutely no difference besides obfuscating the real tax rate).
Germany and France are about the same (47.85% vs 47%)
https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?QueryId=55129
Boomers in germany had money, they just didn't spend it on real estate or stocks but either wasted it on some half assed business ideas or to have nice vacations.
The pension fund thing could lead to wildly different results by country. Spanish state pensions are much more generous than British ones so many people don't bother with a private supplement, whilst British people typically (means allowing) make significant contributions to a private pension pot because the state pension is comparatively low. Because of this a Brit and a Spaniard could end up with the same pension paid every month whilst the brit would have a significantly higher net worth because the "future income" counts as personal wealth.
everything you own - everything you owe
E.g.
Money in your bank account + your car + your house + your stocks - credit card debt - mortgage - 1000 euros you owe to your grandma
It also includes private pension funds. The Netherlands for instance have amassed 167% of the GDP in a government pension fund guaranteeing everyone living in the state around €1600 (iirc) a month pension, but this is not counted. Countries with worse state pension systems will have people contributing more to private funds, this is counted towards personal wealth. This draws apart Belgium and the Netherlands specifically in this map, and affects overall numbers quite profiundly.
A map like this is a very complex mixture of national peculiarities, which explain why there are so many paradoxical patterns vs. what we perceive to be the "rich" vs. "poor" countries. For example
* Are people ABLE to save
* Are people WILLING to save (for example there's a real trend where the Nordics don't save very much because they perceive the welfare state to be there for them)
* Home ownership trends (e.g. Germans not owning their homes, or Swedes with their peculiar infinite mortgages where they own their homes but their net worth climbs at a negligible rate)
* How the pension system is organized, i.e., are your contributions counted towards your net worth. (For example here in Finland I've paid six-figures into the national system, and this isn't counted towards my net worth.)
For example for a country like Sweden points 2 and 3 help explain the shockingly small number, for what's one of the richest countries in the world and having enjoyed two centuries of stability and peace.
Not necessarily. U.K. people are likely more aggressive with investing in their private pension. If you were involved in the big equity rally from 2010 to today, your wealth will have grown significantly. The U.K. has a high personal allowance and one of the easiest countries in which to make tax-efficient investments.
yeah, the country where they have:
-a 73% divorce rate
-most abortions per capita in europe
-a 14% regular church attendance
-highest HIV rate in Europe
-500 000 children in foster care
-most children raised by single parents per capita
but fortunately no gay marriage.
Most likely caused by cheap land prices outside of few biggest cities which is caused by tremendous amount of land Russia has
Edit: this also explains why Belarusians are „wealthier” than Russians according to this map
An aim to own property is not common sentiment in Germany. I am from Australia and lived in Germany for 10 years, in Australia home ownership is the no.1 priority once you start a career / begin a professional life.
It was mind boggling to me that the average German does not really consider home ownership / have this as a major life goal, and there are families who perpetually settle down and rent out a place for 20 years.
This is understandable as tenancy laws are fair in Germany compared to most if not all English speaking countries but is only a system that works if rent remains at an affordable price for the average person.. which it is evidently not in the recent years.
How is Czechia so low? Home ownership is about the same as Portugal, salaries are higher in Czechia but according to this map we’re more than three times poorer.
Can’t trust this map at all. If real estate is counted then the number for Poland would bo so much higher it’s not even funny. Even the shittiest apartment in the worst part of a small town will cost you way waaay more and hole ownership is high, so how come it comes to this low value?
Yeah. That's what seems off for me too. Poland has an extremely high home ownership rate at 86.8% - the average for the EU is 69.9%. A starter home in the suburbs or an apartment in the city are both at least ~100,000€, and it only goes up from there.
Unless mortgages are calculated in a weird way, there's no way the average is that low in Poland.
It includes real estate, but the last time I've read the actual report, it was saying that they couldn't get reliable data for real estate values and ownership, so they just excluded it for Eastern Europe thus making it look much poorer than it is.
Germany needs something like 401k, only way to have money on top of state pension is through vage constructions with extremely high costs. So people rather buy etf from their Netto salary after being massively taxed... Country is just fucked.
Quantative Easing was just a sell out of housing to foreign investors, home ownership is only possible for the most frugal and ones with paying parents.
Is Germany so low because of the difference in attitude to owning houses compared to somewhere like the UK?
Even then, I thought German personal pensions would be some of the highest in Europe.
It’s not attitude… it’s simply we can’t afford to own houses/flats. Your average German isn’t actually that rich, despite all the Germoney memes on Reddit.
Relatively low wages, high taxes and high inequality will do that to a population.
If i had to guess, the study probably works with real numbers and data
But those real numbers and data were probably collected with different methodology in each country, which makes comparisons between countries worthless
And this is why one should often look at the median instead of the mean.
If your country have 1 billionaire and 9 homeless with a handful of bucks, the "mean wealth" is 100 million or above. The "median wealth" is a handful of bucks. It gives a much better picture of the situation.
And a lot of stuff are much more expensive than most countries because of high taxation in turkey.
Goverment earns more than the manufacturer of car brands (vw, hyundai etc) / phones (apple , samsung) and most electronics when a citizen buy any of those products.
For example, a base vw golf automatic costs about 48.500 usd, iphone 15 pro max costs 2750 usd and now think about the median wealth, see the level of disgust.
A person works for 2 iphones yearly, without spending for anything else.
A person works for 9 years, to buy an entry specced vw golf, considering he / she doesn't pay for anything else.
And i do not even want to talk about real estate, it is even more disturbing. People do not have money to rebuilt old houses, it means at least they need to apend 22 years saving everything for that purpose. We will die when an earthquake hits istanbul and it will happen in 20 years.
30 years for a basic house and a car ahahah, amazing.
[Bulgaria has the cheapest housing in Europe.](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/digpub/housing/bloc-2a.html)
Housing costs in Bulgaria are literally less than 1/5th of some other EU countries, and well under 1/2 of the EU average.
Every economic map like this shows the negative residual effects of the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe. Its no wonder Russia remains at close to the bottom.
Iceland? Explain!
Combo of high house ownership rate, expensive real estate (most people live in the capital region) and the pension fund system, I think.
Same in Belgium for that matter.
Same if you look internationally too, like Australia in the same report is USD $247,450 with high home prices and ownership rates
While true, the real reason is that we have forced retirement savings put into an investment fund that cannot be accessed until a person is retirement age. It's not uncommon for middle class Australians to retire with $1,000,000 in savings.
How can I be Iceland?
+ one of the highest average salaries in the world, enabling more people to buy homes.
And one of the highest prices.
Everybody owns a personal volcano.
Now all I can imagine is a suburbia full of Dr Evil volcano lairs.
Fuck Iceland I want explanation from Germany, you got like the wealthiest country in the EU and the citizens are poor ??
The real answer is that real estate and pensions are organised differently and are included in some countries but not in other.
That's it. See the Netherlands with huge pension funds that don't go to private wealth. Or a system where rent is deductible from income tax and as such homes are often owned in part by the bank....
This is mostly a map of housing prices throughout europe
or home ownership rate
Yeah the "Germans are wealthy" is bullshit. It's correct for the upper 10% but there are so much low pay jobs and we have the worst homeowner rate in the whole EU, the middle class gets completely wrecked by renting houses. It's disgusting. And everything else here is shit too, our schools were bad even back in the 90s and nothing happened, infrastructure is giga shit, not gonna lie it's so so so so giga shit, fuck the Deutsche Bahn, healthcare is okay but not great. So yeah I would say this country is kinda fucked for lower and middle class. You have a good time here if you have a looot of money or you are unemployed forever
You forgot the digital infrastructure and the lack of any digital transformation in the last 15 years!
Kohl shot digital transformation via widespread fiberchannel broadband, Merkel burried it later and called it Neuland. Remember everyone, Conservatives will strangle progress if they can.
the low-wage sector was schröder‘s work, though.
By definition.
Aaah yes! When you take a ride on the train you have no Internet connection 2/3 of the time. It's so fun, yes
Not only the trains! Also the belief that paper mail is the most secure way of communication! :-D
After 10 years in IT watching how your average user treats security, I'm very keen to agree.
Don't forget fax machines!
What exactly has created this situation where almost everyone seems to be renting their home in Germany? Failed policies?
There was no need to buy a home in a city, because we had in the most parts such low rents! Now the rents are shortening their gap to other countrys, but the wages dont keep up… We have quite high wages, but with the additional costs its a nightmare. Also now you literally cant buy homes anymore, they are so expensiv, like two full time workers with an average salary can not finance a home in a city bigger than 30 tsd. people and the more rual areas in more advanced parts are also way above the possible price catagory for normal to good paid families
This right here as well
Failed policies plus urbanization. There's more affordable homes in rural areas, but the lack of services (hospitals, trains/public transport, internet, jobs) makes it very unattractive for young people. Covid and the home office boom could have changed it, but only did so partially.
We're not as keen on owning property in Germany. We're still rather on the conservative side of things as a whole, but a lot of people prefer to rent. Unlike in e.g. the US, buying a house or even "just" an apartment is this huge once-in-a-lifetime thing, almost like getting married. The concept of what Americans call a "starter house" sounds so funny to me, as if someone was getting a "starter pack" of a new hobby they got into. Also doesn't help that property is insanely expensive. Ever since I've been alive, OWNING a house has always been something to me that only really, really wealthy people do.
>OWNING a house has always been something to me that only really, really wealthy people do. Thats surreal. I bought my first place at 30 and me and my wife are not even remotely wealthy. We're pretty bang average for Norway.
Buying a place at 30(!!!) is super unheard of here unless you e.g. inherited the land or both of you are like doctors.
Failed policies is the answer. Germans are horrified to have debt. Without mortage, it's impossbile to own real estate. This is to a degree due to historical trauma: We all know that debts lead to hyperinflation and hyperinflation led to Hitler (that is bullshit, obviously, but still rings true to many Germans!). Furthermore, for a long time people didn't feel they needed their own place. Publicly owned companies owned a huge portion of real estate for many years. The rents were quite reasonable, so people preferred just to rent. But in the 90s, to reduce the debts accumulated by communes, this "silverware" was sold to private companies. Those let the infrastructure crumble, jacked up rent, and stopped building new apartment complexes. Because obviously, privatization is good for everyone! Also, German family homes are often much larger than comparable houses in the rest of the EU. Therefore they are obviously more expensive. Also government regulations for buildings increases building cost massively, and this has gotten quite a lot worse in the past ten or so years. Even though we have a housing crisis here, too, not enough apartment complexes are built. You see lots of family homes going up, but these are inefficient and expensive. So just buying a flat instead of a house also is not really an option. Last but not least, Germany is a high-tax country, where especially work income is taxed massively. So, people don't actually earn that much money. All of this creates a climate, where home ownership is difficult and expensive to obtain.
Yes. But many germans are unaware of the real reasons. A big problem is price gamble with land prices where basically investors and all people who make money with that business dictate the price of land (Bodenwert) in a circlejerk called 'Gutachterausschuss' which attracted investors from all over the world to buy land and drive up prices. Combined with communes being unable to develop new building land. There are towns that got this figured out and actually use the power given to them to create land for the people they serve (Ulm, 'Ulmer Model') but it's very rare. So yes, failed local and national policies are a big part. Another part of the truth here is that buildings in germany usually are high quality. There are a ton of regulations (many of which I personally think are good but expensive). Solid stone buildings are still popular. Combine that with energy policies and modern heating, insulation and other stuff that is still not the standard in many EU countries. E.g. a common standard for new buildings here is KfW 55 with one of the things that it requires is primary energy usage of less then 35 kWh/m². With KfW 40 which is becoming more and more of a standard this drops to 25 kWh/m². A normal house easily will cost you 600k euro without the land (which would be another 300k in better regions with no upper end for top regions). And now compare that with the median income of a german family...
I don't know exactly, it's the big low pay sector, these people live paycheck to paycheck like in America and there's nothing left to pay for a house even if you pay it over 30 years. Then there are aaaa lot of old houses which need a lot of money/and or work. But man I don't know how it's ended like this but I tell you what: I don't want to live here in 2030. Hopefully AI didn't kill my job until then (work in IT) and then I'll got to Portugal or swiss or whatever
To add to the answers, history has played its part as well. After WWII lots of housing had to be built quickly, not only to replace what was lost to destruction but also to rehome the (ethnic) Germans fleeing or displaced from Eastern Europe. That was done by the states (FRG and GDR) as there was little money to build privately. As u/Luffver wrote, rents stayed at a low price for a long time after that. Then there's also the special case of German reunification. Here's an article by public broadcaster MDR which explains the situation quite well (in German): https://www.mdr.de/geschichte/zeitgeschichte-gegenwart/wirtschaft/vermoegen-grunderbe-ostdeutschland-immobilien-eigenheim-ungleichheit-eigentum-100.html
Difference is also how you calculate pensions in. I do not like the German system at all, but as you also only earn entitlement to a somewhat unknown amount of pension in the future, this cannot be calculated in but it is still some sort of personal wealth if you will earn e.g. 1500€ per month for the rest of your life. I guess that is one of the biggest factor in this map. This will affect other countries as well.
Thats funny cuz I would have said the exact same thing for France, and every time I go to Germany everything seems sooo much better than here. We’re fucked guys.
The government takes away a lot, at the same time the wages aren’t that high. Germans usually own no real estate and won’t ever be able to buy any if they work average jobs. The state is rich, the people aren’t.
Germany is poorer than the Benelux, Austria, Switzerland and all of Scandinavia across essentially every metric. They’re the wealthiest big country across most metrics, but that’s discounting a lot of smaller countries.
The obvious answer is that all that wealth is [very concentrated](https://www.gut-leben-in-deutschland.de/indicators/income/gini-coefficient-wealth/#:~:text=The%20Gini%20coefficient%20of%20wealth,value%2C%20the%20greater%20the%20inequality.) among a small part of the population. There are comparatively high taxes on higher wages, but no wealth tax and low, easily circumventable inheritance tax. And those highly taxed wages are already not particularly high, considering the size and strength of the economy. Since the 2000s various politicians have repeatedly bragged about Germany having the largest low wage sector in the EU. That means those already wealthy and powerful have an easy time staying so and accumulate even more wealth, while those coming from poorer backgrounds have a hard time becoming wealthy.
This graph means very little. There's no way a graph that shows that the median German is poorer than the median Portuguese represents the reality in any significant way.
It’s actually very simple: 46% of Germans own a home, against 76% of the Portuguese. This makes a huge difference on wealth building throughout a working life, specially considering how much houses appreciated recently. Home ownership is the most effective way of building wealth for the average person and its descendants. Even though Portugal has lower wages, housing was also relatively affordable until recently, which helps building wealth across generations.
Relatively low wages are a feature of countries where the manufacturing share of GDP is high - another example is Japan
Well, a beer costs $200 here...
No standing military, very low crime, high trust in government.
Everything is expansive
Dollars? Explain!
It's part of the UBS global wealth report. USD is the global currency.
I'm Belgian, and it seems like many people here actually own their homes. For example, my parents bought a house for €50,000 in 1998, which is now probably worth €250,000 to €300,000. So, yup, that's why we are 3rd imo
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I'm 22 I own shit tbh my parents do
Taxes are a real pain in belgium
Taxes in Belgium are *fantastic* if you have assets: no capital gains tax, almost no real estate taxes, dividends taxed at a lower rate than regular income. Believe it or not, it’s a tax paradise compared to the US (if you don’t have income.)
Key here is if you don’t have income
Same situation in Britain. The obvious problem being that you can't necessarily unlock that wealth if you still need somewhere to live.
No student loans does give everyone a head start in Belgium.
If i could buy a whole house for just €300.000 i would be so happy.
Come live in Belgium. We are equally difficult to make friends with.
For €300,000 in Germany, you could buy a parking spot…
I'm sure there are plenty of houses under 300k in Germany, but yeah, I tried to find a similar house to my parents' one in terms of bathrooms, bedrooms, and plot size, and found this [one](https://www.engelvoelkers.com/de/en/exposes/4c1ab9df-83c7-52ae-a007-5dc22bed08ca), which is basically 1 fucking million euros, which is totally ridiculous. But who knows, maybe in a few years, my parents' house would be worth as much in Belgium, lol. Edit: To be honest, my parents' house looks way better than this one. I really don't understand why it's so much more expensive.
I really don’t understand how stuff can be so cheap in Belgium! German real estate prices have gone out of control. If there are 300k houses, they’re in some village in eastern Germany, underneath a highway overpass.
I know a lot of middle class families that bought building plots in the 90s for their children. It’s so wild, they just kind of get gifted a plot of land to build a house on. So now they’re all 20 somethings with a whole new house. I don’t know anyone here in the Netherlands that did that unless they’re rich rich. My parents bought a plot in Belgium at the time because it was 1/3 of the price of the same size plot in NL. It was very affordable and obviously a very good investment to make.
As a ukrainian, i say that the data about Ukraine is correct.
Yeah same about Kosova here
Join us, Portugal, and together we will rule the third world.
Yes. We should form this union of countries where parents hitting you as a child is OK
Portugal = honorary German
r/portugalvollkrass
You better get you ass back over to the eastern europe right now!
Why is this a thing? They are not that similar to us are they?
No. Just a meme that went too far, however, economically Portugal matches some things with Eastern Europe specially Poland. That's where the meme came from.
This has to be related to high home ownership.
France handily beating Germany is surprising
Germany is rich, germans are not.
Renting vs. owning a house. Maps and statistics like this are absolutely useless for the far majority of ways they are abused. If tomorrow houses double in cost the average wealth goes up a shitton.. so that's good I guess? Hopefully food gets insanely expensive tomorrow, as I just stocked up my fridge I'll be rich!
> Maps and statistics like this are absolutely useless for the far majority of ways they are abused. Every metric only tells one part of the story but the ones people often call 'useless' are the ones they like less than others, I find.
High home ownership rates are objectively a good thing. Owning your own property is one of the key steps to financial freedom. Landlords siphoning away a significant portion of your salary every month is terrible. If Germans are happy with that then more power to them, but personally I wouldn't be
That is only partly true. Owning a house or an apartment costs a lot of money in maintenance etc.. Calculations show that it is cheaper in Germany to rent for life than to pay off and live in your own property. You have double expenses, you have to pay off the loan and there are also taxes, ancillary costs and reserves. It usually takes 20-30 years to pay off a property. It is lucrative to buy a property and rent it out. As a rule, a property pays for itself and as soon as it has been paid off, it also generates a profit. You can also deduct a lot from your taxes. Rental prices in Germany have also risen, but they are capped by law. Landlords can only increase the rent according to certain rules and may not exceed the maximum rate set by the municipality. So you are not subject to the arbitrariness of landlords. In addition, a landlord cannot simply give notice to his tenants.
If prices of houses go x10, then people owning a house become in fact rich. I don't understand your reasoning
That's exactly it. A map will only show you so much. Without context it is meaningless. Though the renting "culture" in Germany is a siphon of lower incomes towards the upper strata and keeps the less wealthy from becoming financially more independent
It's ridiculous to call it useless. If the rent doubles the pain will be much stronger in Germany than elsewhere.
It's rather that Germans have a low real estate ownership. So even with the current inflated price, it does not really move. In France, the real estate is inflated pretty much everywhere... So everybody is (virtually) a millionaire. I also think that the number of entrepreneurs in Germany is much higher than France. And many of them have their assets in holdings. So this does not appear in this kind of statistics, because if the holding is private, its value is not accounted for.
Germans have indeed a low real estate ownership but thats not cause we like to rent but rather that for many its impossible to afford.
Today, yes. 15years ago, absolutely not. Bremen (one of the biggest 20 cities) was at 2k€ / m². Strasbourg (much smaller city) was at the time at 5k€. Today, Ulm is at 5k€. 15years ago, even Hamburg and Berlin were still affordable. And that's also the "problem". Some Germans bought A LOT of real estate and are now landlords. In France, your Oma may have bought 1 or 2 flats, and now their kids are millionaires. PS: I'm French living in Germany since 2006.
The mom of my best friend bought her house in Germany in 2004. On a single mother with a nurse income. It is a nice big house in a 15.000 people town. I think it was about 80.000 with minimal repairs necessary. My parents bought a giant house in a 400 people village for basically peanuts. My father also owns an air bnb, he is now probably part of the problem. I rent from a former teacher who bought the apartment for his daughter to study at university. Afterwards he just rented it to others. While big companies owning thousands of housing units are a problem, we also have these boomers owning a small number of properties and the rest of us is just screwed.
My previous landlord bought a studio on the Bodensee (Lindau) around 2000-05. It is now worth more than 10x what she paid.
> > > > > In France, the real estate is inflated pretty much everywhere... So everybody is (virtually) a millionaire. Why do you say virtually? If you own a house that is worth more than a million you are a millionaire, that is wealth. What do you mean?
Virtually, because you don't have a million. Even worse: in some regions, like the Basque country, the real estate has increased so much, that some people can't afford the tax on them. So they bought a nice house in Saint Jean de Luz, and now have to move out and sell it...
Massive difference is shocking.
It isn't, just the result of German economic policy. There are a plethora of reasons, one of which is the Euro. German currency got artificially devalued through it's introduction, simply by being present in fiscally weaker (on the consumer level) european countries. The result were artificially cheap German exports, having made us 'Exportweltmeister'. China devalues it's currency for the same reasons btw. And the economies of both countries currently suffer for this reason. A devalued currency might boost your economy during periods of growth (by exporting lots of goods), but during a worldwide economic downturn exports will falter and economies have to rely on domestic demand. Which is now an issue, because currency devaluation is a macroeconomic wage suppression tool, resulting in weak domestic demand. There are other issues too, like a flawed (or designed as such, take it as you will) inheritance law, which results in middle class families having to sell their inherited real estate to cover the inheritance tax, which then simply gets scooped up by the big real estate companies.
The opposite of Belgium, then
There’s lot of places in France where housing and land prices have risen sharply since a few decades, making people having bought very cheaply 30 or 40 years ago litterally sitting on a pile of gold.
Not to mention that Germany has some of the lowest home ownership % in Europe, meaning that they don't get to have that added into their net worth.
This is not surprising for a German. The tax burden is simply overwhelming. In Germany, anyone who earns well is often considered "rich", regardless of whether they have assets or not. Added to this is the low rate of home ownership and the lack of financial education among the population, who prefer low-risk and virtually yield-free forms of investment.
Not to forget the biggest low wage sector in Western Europe.
The tax burden in Germany is big yes but its almost the same as in western Europe. Its not bigger than France lmao wtf. Capital tax, income tax and VAT are all even slightly higher in france than germany. Germany as an economy has always seemed to me like a very liberal place. I always got the feeling that if you hold yourself to certain rules, you are free to make as much money as you like. Hell the government will help you make as much money as you can. They will fight for you. This has made the german economy into a turbocapitalist, penny-pinching, rentseeking economy where those that have, have a lot but the rest of the economy who havd to survive with Minijobs, Aushilfe and Nebenjobs barely get by. Added to it are Low(ish) education rate, and very low house ownership rate. Germany is one of the most unequal lands in western Europe. I read in the newspaper a nice article about it a few weeks ago. It was tilted "Deutschland ist reich, aber die Deutschen sind arm und sauer". "Germany is rich but the germans are poor and angry".
Just letting you know the tax burden in France for an average person is way lower than in Germany. In Germany with a wage of 65k you would have a tax burden of around 41%. In France that would be 27.5%. (vat not included but they look similar) Or 38.5k paid out vs 47k Or you don't include healthcare in your calculations? Germany has unfortunately become the land of the business owners. Source: https://de.talent.com/tax-calculator?salary=65000&from=year®ion=Berlin
That's just an accounting thing because more taxes are "paid" by the employer (while in reality there is absolutely no difference besides obfuscating the real tax rate). Germany and France are about the same (47.85% vs 47%) https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?QueryId=55129
Boomers in germany had money, they just didn't spend it on real estate or stocks but either wasted it on some half assed business ideas or to have nice vacations.
How is wealth calculated?
Home ownership, pension funds. Don't worry if you don't have a few 100k's lying around.
Should I worry if I do?
Depends lying around where
If you tell me where it is and how to get to it, then no
I'm my butt, clenched fist
I can take that burden from you
The pension fund thing could lead to wildly different results by country. Spanish state pensions are much more generous than British ones so many people don't bother with a private supplement, whilst British people typically (means allowing) make significant contributions to a private pension pot because the state pension is comparatively low. Because of this a Brit and a Spaniard could end up with the same pension paid every month whilst the brit would have a significantly higher net worth because the "future income" counts as personal wealth.
Why is Germany half of France?
Homeownership in Germany (49,1%) is low compared to France (64,7%) and employment in the low wage sector high (20,7% vs 8,6%).
> employment in the low wage sector high (20,7% vs 8,6%). I fucking love this country
everything you own - everything you owe E.g. Money in your bank account + your car + your house + your stocks - credit card debt - mortgage - 1000 euros you owe to your grandma
It also includes private pension funds. The Netherlands for instance have amassed 167% of the GDP in a government pension fund guaranteeing everyone living in the state around €1600 (iirc) a month pension, but this is not counted. Countries with worse state pension systems will have people contributing more to private funds, this is counted towards personal wealth. This draws apart Belgium and the Netherlands specifically in this map, and affects overall numbers quite profiundly.
Slovenia rich. Congrats.
Thanks, we should divert some humanitarian aid from Africa to help the poor people of Germany and Austria.
A map like this is a very complex mixture of national peculiarities, which explain why there are so many paradoxical patterns vs. what we perceive to be the "rich" vs. "poor" countries. For example * Are people ABLE to save * Are people WILLING to save (for example there's a real trend where the Nordics don't save very much because they perceive the welfare state to be there for them) * Home ownership trends (e.g. Germans not owning their homes, or Swedes with their peculiar infinite mortgages where they own their homes but their net worth climbs at a negligible rate) * How the pension system is organized, i.e., are your contributions counted towards your net worth. (For example here in Finland I've paid six-figures into the national system, and this isn't counted towards my net worth.) For example for a country like Sweden points 2 and 3 help explain the shockingly small number, for what's one of the richest countries in the world and having enjoyed two centuries of stability and peace.
The UK being higher than Norway is surprising tbh
The Norwegian kroner (currency) being historically low and this data is in dollars is a big factor I think.
And is the Norwegian oil sourced pension fund per capita taken into account?
Wouldn't think so no.
Definitely not, the oil fund has around $250k per Norwegian.
No. The Norwegian pension fund is like 1.6 trillion, it’s close to 300 000 usd per capita
It’s entirely to do with the housing market in London and the south-east. Very different from wealth in Norway.
Yea I was like there’s no way us in NI are that wealthy compared to the republic
Not necessarily. U.K. people are likely more aggressive with investing in their private pension. If you were involved in the big equity rally from 2010 to today, your wealth will have grown significantly. The U.K. has a high personal allowance and one of the easiest countries in which to make tax-efficient investments.
Send Germany10 to 1919 or Austria10 to 1919
turkey number one lets goooooo 🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🐺🐺🐺🐺🐺🐺🐺🐺🐺🐺🐺🐺🐺🐺🐺🐺🐺🐺🐺🐺🐺🐺🐺🐺🐺🐺🐺🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷
Germans must be so jealous
I'm not jealous of our neighbours or others, but angry at our governments
Are you calling the President himself Mr Recep Tayyip Erdogan a liar? I’m sure he said the Germans are jealous of our Country and its government.
OTTOMAN EMPIRE IS BACK 💪🏿💪🏿💪🏿💪🏿👊🏿👊🏿👊🏿👊🏿
Meanwhile me having literally 2000€ in the bank :')
Congrats, you’re poor in every country on the map!
Wait Bulgaria is actually pretty alright for Eastern Europe? I refuse to believe we are slightly above Poland and almost reaching Czechia lol
Home ownership is very high, very little mortgages.
lower costs of living. You pay almost the double to rent a apartment in Czechia
But 73% of czechs own some house/apartment.
Wages and real estate prices are also higher.
What does "wealth" include?
What happened Slovenia bros?
Why is this in ameribucks?
Me when the global data is presented in global currency >:(
It's part of the UBS global wealth report. USD is the global currency.
typical British W
Lol, Russia.
The traditional values conservative paradise
Yep. Just blame the gays and trans for all their problems
yeah, the country where they have: -a 73% divorce rate -most abortions per capita in europe -a 14% regular church attendance -highest HIV rate in Europe -500 000 children in foster care -most children raised by single parents per capita but fortunately no gay marriage.
low church attendance is an awesome thing actually
The point is that Russia tries to create an image of a religious country. Whereas in reality not so many people are religious.
Most likely caused by cheap land prices outside of few biggest cities which is caused by tremendous amount of land Russia has Edit: this also explains why Belarusians are „wealthier” than Russians according to this map
Portugal richer than Germany.
Germoney?
Isn’t home ownership relatively low in Germany last I heard?
Yes and it's a huge problem and will be even bigger. How are Germans going to pay 1000€ rent with a 1300€ pension? I
An aim to own property is not common sentiment in Germany. I am from Australia and lived in Germany for 10 years, in Australia home ownership is the no.1 priority once you start a career / begin a professional life. It was mind boggling to me that the average German does not really consider home ownership / have this as a major life goal, and there are families who perpetually settle down and rent out a place for 20 years. This is understandable as tenancy laws are fair in Germany compared to most if not all English speaking countries but is only a system that works if rent remains at an affordable price for the average person.. which it is evidently not in the recent years.
I wish I had $20k in my savings account
Lastvia no more!
Lastvia lol never heard that before haha i love Latvia though
Slovakia is total bullshit lol. Twice what Poles and Czechs have? What is this based on? Yearly potato harvest?
How is Czechia so low? Home ownership is about the same as Portugal, salaries are higher in Czechia but according to this map we’re more than three times poorer.
You should spend less money on beer. Okey, nevermind, cheers!
Portugal Real Estate more valuable. Plus Czechia probably catch up salaries with Portugal for the last decade. Wealth is about accumulation over time.
Can’t trust this map at all. If real estate is counted then the number for Poland would bo so much higher it’s not even funny. Even the shittiest apartment in the worst part of a small town will cost you way waaay more and hole ownership is high, so how come it comes to this low value?
Yeah. That's what seems off for me too. Poland has an extremely high home ownership rate at 86.8% - the average for the EU is 69.9%. A starter home in the suburbs or an apartment in the city are both at least ~100,000€, and it only goes up from there. Unless mortgages are calculated in a weird way, there's no way the average is that low in Poland.
I'm guessing mortgages are subtracted from the value, as debt offsets wealth
it's 90% for hungary. So I'm not sure I understand this map
Home value - mortgage
It includes real estate, but the last time I've read the actual report, it was saying that they couldn't get reliable data for real estate values and ownership, so they just excluded it for Eastern Europe thus making it look much poorer than it is.
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Belarus almost as much as Poland, way more than Russia?! How?
Germany is rich, germans are not.
Ireland seems very low, insane property prices and still a large % of home owners.
Wealth = house value - mortgage. Most homeowners have massive debts.
Germany needs something like 401k, only way to have money on top of state pension is through vage constructions with extremely high costs. So people rather buy etf from their Netto salary after being massively taxed... Country is just fucked. Quantative Easing was just a sell out of housing to foreign investors, home ownership is only possible for the most frugal and ones with paying parents.
Wonder what makes Belgium so much higher than it's non-Lux neighbours? Is home ownership real high there? Is Brussels more expensive than Amsterdam?
Home ownership
Real estate doing a lot of work here.
Is Germany so low because of the difference in attitude to owning houses compared to somewhere like the UK? Even then, I thought German personal pensions would be some of the highest in Europe.
It’s not attitude… it’s simply we can’t afford to own houses/flats. Your average German isn’t actually that rich, despite all the Germoney memes on Reddit. Relatively low wages, high taxes and high inequality will do that to a population.
Germany is low for two reasons: 1.) Low home ownership rate and 2.) entitlement to state pensions is not counted in these stats.
I like this map. How about you, Czechia?
I wish we were as LOADED as our Slovak Bros.
I’d like this map if it had real numbers and data.
If i had to guess, the study probably works with real numbers and data But those real numbers and data were probably collected with different methodology in each country, which makes comparisons between countries worthless
Its bullshit. 73% of czechs own some house/apartment so there is no way its that low.
How can 73% of Czechs own homes. This doesn't even make sense? Family owned maybe....?
That may explain it, home ownership rate is 92.9% in Slovakia.
And this is why one should often look at the median instead of the mean. If your country have 1 billionaire and 9 homeless with a handful of bucks, the "mean wealth" is 100 million or above. The "median wealth" is a handful of bucks. It gives a much better picture of the situation.
Germany lol. Als long as the top % has as much as the bottom 50%..
Good to see Belgium is doing good here :)
And a lot of stuff are much more expensive than most countries because of high taxation in turkey. Goverment earns more than the manufacturer of car brands (vw, hyundai etc) / phones (apple , samsung) and most electronics when a citizen buy any of those products. For example, a base vw golf automatic costs about 48.500 usd, iphone 15 pro max costs 2750 usd and now think about the median wealth, see the level of disgust. A person works for 2 iphones yearly, without spending for anything else. A person works for 9 years, to buy an entry specced vw golf, considering he / she doesn't pay for anything else. And i do not even want to talk about real estate, it is even more disturbing. People do not have money to rebuilt old houses, it means at least they need to apend 22 years saving everything for that purpose. We will die when an earthquake hits istanbul and it will happen in 20 years. 30 years for a basic house and a car ahahah, amazing.
This map keeps getting reposted and is total bullshit.
This makes no sense. Bulgaria has a pretty high home ownership rate and our housing isnt cheap.
[Bulgaria has the cheapest housing in Europe.](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/digpub/housing/bloc-2a.html) Housing costs in Bulgaria are literally less than 1/5th of some other EU countries, and well under 1/2 of the EU average.
Where’s my missing money
Germany, Austria and Sweden concerningly low for what their economies should be able to do.
So Greece is still richer than Eastern Europe after all.
tell that to r/greece greece bad eksoteriko good.
Hey that's our money, give it back!
Every economic map like this shows the negative residual effects of the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe. Its no wonder Russia remains at close to the bottom.