Can we not simply start high and lower it later?

You can, and sometimes it is right — for a house with little that is comparable, for instance. But then reckon with the time it costs, and decide in advance when you will review the number. A price with no agreed review date is seldom lowered; it is defended.

A buy-up firm has made us a written offer. Are we now bound?

No. A contract concerning land does not take effect without notarial recording (section 311b BGB) — a letter, a promise or a signature on a form does not oblige you to sell. Do not let a deadline in the letter press you; it is a sales technique, not a legal consequence.

Two siblings want to sell, one thinks the price too low. What helps?

Usually not another number but a separate question: is this about the price or about the division? Someone who feels overlooked thinks the price too low even when it is right. It helps to lay the derivation out openly — and if it really is about the money, a formal valuation that binds everyone.

Knowledge · Orientation

Wish, value and price are three different numbers.

Almost every conversation about a house begins with a number, and it is almost always unclear which of the three is meant. This is not an argument about decimal places: two people who mean different numbers are talking about different things without noticing.

The answer first. The hoped-for price is what you need, or think fair. Market value is a legally defined term: the price that would be achievable in ordinary commerce given the legal circumstances and actual characteristics of the property — disregarding unusual or personal circumstances (section 194 BauGB). The price is what somebody eventually pays. All three may differ; it only becomes expensive when they are confused.

A hoped-for price is often treated as an error to be driven out of a family. We think that is wrong. Almost every such price contains something true, merely expressed in the wrong currency: thirty years of work on the house. A roof renewed in 2019. The expectation of a sister who depends on her share. Or simply the feeling that a home cannot be worth so little.

So we ask first where the number comes from, not whether it is right. If it comes from a need — because a care place has to be paid for, say — the real question is not the price but the financing. If it comes from a comparison with the neighbouring house, it is worth looking at what was different there. If it comes from an expectation among siblings, it is a question of fairness and not of the market.

The uncomfortable truth behind it: the market does not know your need. It does not pay more because someone needs more — nor less because someone is in a hurry. That is exactly why it is better to look at need and price separately than to hope the price will cover the need.

The quickest self-service figure online is the guideline land value, and it is the most misunderstood. It is an average locational value for the land, determined by the valuation committees for areas with essentially uniform use and value conditions (section 196 BauGB). Three things follow, and each one changes the sum.

First: it describes the land, not the house. Precisely where land is cheap, the building carries the larger part of the value — and about the building the guideline value says nothing. Second: it is an average for an area, not for your plot. Shape, access, noise, slope and what may be built are not contained in an area mean. Third: it has a valuation date. A value as at 1 January describes January.

So plot area times guideline value plus “something for the house” is not a valuation but an arithmetic exercise that occasionally lands nearby by chance. How we handle this on the district pages, and why we expressly mark medians across municipalities, is set out under where we work.

This is one of the uncomfortable places in the business, and we would rather say it ourselves. Under section 652 BGB an agent’s commission arises only on success: it is earned when the contract comes about as a result of the referral or the brokering. Anyone who wants to win an instruction therefore has an incentive to name the number the client likes — not the one that holds.

That is not an accusation against a profession but a description of an incentive. It is useful because it gives you a better question than “how much will I get?”. Ask: how do you derive that number? Whoever can name three comparable sales and say how they differ from your house has calculated. Whoever names a round figure and talks about the feeling in the market has advertised. More on this in agent commission and conflict of interest.

And the one sentence that brings most calm at this stage: an offer binds nobody. A contract concerning land does not take effect without notarial recording (section 311b BGB). A handshake, a promise on the telephone, a signed sheet of paper at the kitchen table — none of it obliges you to sell. Anyone who tells you otherwise is mistaken, or pushing.

Here we deliberately give no percentage. What circulates online is rarely evidenced, and an invented figure would be exactly the error this page describes. What we can say is what kind of cost too high a price has — and it is not counted in euros.

It costs time, and time costs money. The house goes on existing meanwhile: insurance, property tax, heating in winter, a garden somebody has to mow. With an empty house there is the added risk that something happens which nobody notices — see the house stands empty — the first weeks.

It costs attention. This is our experience and not an evidenced market statement: the most serious enquirers look early — and a house that returns with a price correction is read differently from one priced coherently from the start. A number can be lowered; a first impression cannot be repeated.

And it costs agreement. In a community of heirs the number is rarely only a number. If the house stands for a long time, “we set the price too high” quickly becomes “you set the price too high”. That does not make dividing the estate (section 2042 BGB) legally harder, but it makes it harder between people.

How we arrive at a number

We begin at the house and not at the table: condition, layout, year of construction, what has been renewed and what is due. Then we look for comparable cases and say how they differ. What emerges is a reasoned market and price assessment whose derivation you can read line by line — and whose assumptions you are free to dispute.

What it expressly is not: a formal valuation report. That comes from an independent expert, not from us. When you need one — because a co-heir is being paid out, or a tax office is examining the matter — and when a comprehensible assessment suffices, is set out in who does what — lawyer, notary, agent.

Can we not simply start high and lower it later?: You can, and sometimes it is right — for a house with little that is comparable, for instance. But then reckon with the time it costs, and decide in advance when you will review the number. A price with no agreed review date is seldom lowered; it is defended.
A buy-up firm has made us a written offer. Are we now bound?: No. A contract concerning land does not take effect without notarial recording (section 311b BGB) — a letter, a promise or a signature on a form does not oblige you to sell. Do not let a deadline in the letter press you; it is a sales technique, not a legal consequence.
Two siblings want to sell, one thinks the price too low. What helps?: Usually not another number but a separate question: is this about the price or about the division? Someone who feels overlooked thinks the price too low even when it is right. It helps to lay the derivation out openly — and if it really is about the money, a formal valuation that binds everyone.