The Honest Comparison: This Flat Versus a Global ETF

Compare like with like: the same €29,500 today, plus the same €258/month you would otherwise burn on the flat, over the same ten years.

Flat, base case. Year-10 net equity after 4% selling costs at 2%/year appreciation: €79,500, free of tax on the gain after ten years (§23 EStG – see the tax track).

Global equity ETF. €29,500 lump plus €258/month at 7% nominal → about €102,700. After Abgeltungsteuer with the 30% Teilfreistellung for equity funds (~18.5% effective) and the Sparerpauschbetrag: roughly €94,900.

The ETF wins the base case by about €15,000 – while staying liquid, spread over thousands of companies, and costing zero hours a year.

Vary the one assumption that matters:

Break-even is roughly 2.5–3% nominal appreciation. vdp had German condos at +2.6% year-on-year in Q2 2026; Musterstadt, our invented example, sits flat to −1%. This is a genuine coin-flip – and one you cannot un-flip for a decade.

Where the evidence is genuinely mixed. Jordà, Knoll, Kuvshinov, Schularick and Taylor (QJE 2019) famously found housing beat equities globally 1870–2015 – 6.6% versus 4.6% real, at roughly half the volatility. But their own German series says: post-1980, housing 4.1% real, equities 10.1% real. And Chambers, Spaenjers and Steiner (RFS 2021), using real institutional accounts instead of index proxies, find net-of-cost residential returns of only about 2.3% real, because maintenance and capex eat far more rent than indices assume. Treat "housing beats stocks" as contested, not settled.

The real case for the flat. (a) Ten-year fixed-rate leverage, unavailable on equities without margin risk. (b) The €170,000 fixed loan is a short bond position – unexpected inflation transfers wealth to you. (c) Rent is roughly inflation-linked. (d) Forced saving, which behaviourally beats an ETF plan you stop funding in a bad year.

The case against, plainly. 12% dead cost in, 4% out; negative leverage (2.8% net yield against 4.2% debt); €8,000 of real equity behind a €178,000 asset; ten years of illiquidity; and concentration sitting right next to your salaries. If you would not buy this flat unlevered at a 2.8% net yield, then you are buying the leverage, not the flat – and you should be able to say out loud why levered residential in this one place is the best available use of that leverage.