Search & sourcing

The visible market

ImmoScout24, Immowelt, and increasingly Kleinanzeigen are where most properties are listed. They are useful for one specific purpose: getting a calibrated sense of pricing in a given segment and city. Spending two weeks browsing, sorting by Lage and Quadratmeterpreis, builds a market sense no spreadsheet can replicate.

For sourcing actual deals, the portals are a mixed environment. Hot listings can disappear within hours; underpriced units rarely linger. Properties that sit on the portals for weeks often have a reason, sometimes obvious from the listing, sometimes hidden in the Teilungserklärung or the Energieausweis.

The less-visible market

A meaningful share of investment property never reaches the portals at all. It moves through Makler networks, where deals are emailed first to clients with established relationships. Building this access is mostly a function of being known, meeting Makler in person, being clear about budget and criteria, and following through quickly when an off-market opportunity is offered.

Other off-market channels include direct seller approaches (a written Anschreiben to owners in a target building), Bauträger relationships for new-build (Neubau) projects sold off-plan, and family or professional networks. None of these scale easily; all of them depend on time invested before any deal is in sight.

Auctions: the unusual route

Zwangsversteigerung, court-ordered auctions of foreclosed properties, exist as a separate market entirely. Prices can be lower than open-market equivalents, but inspection rights are limited, Sachmängelhaftung (warranties) are essentially absent, and the bidding mechanics reward experience. For most first-time investors it is a route worth understanding but not entering without guidance.

The Maklerprovision question

Since the 2020 commission-allocation reform (the Gesetz zur Verteilung der Maklerkosten), residential buyers and sellers in Germany typically split the Maklerprovision (broker commission) 50/50 on a deal. The commonly quoted total is 7.14 percent of purchase price including VAT, paid roughly half by each side. Specific deals can vary, and the exact split should always be confirmed in writing before signing anything.

For investors, this is mostly a Kaufnebenkosten line item to budget for. It rarely changes the deal calculus on its own.

What an effective search actually looks like

The patterns most experienced investors describe have a few common elements:

• A clear, narrow brief, neighbourhood, property type, price range, held consistently across months rather than reset every weekend
• Daily portal alerts as the floor, not the ceiling
• Three to five Makler relationships in the target city, refreshed periodically
• Two to four viewings per week during active phases, twenty to fifty before a serious offer is made
• A standard due-diligence checklist applied to every property reaching the offer stage

What it does not usually look like is finding “the one” on the second viewing and submitting an offer the same week. That happens; it is the exception.

Where this goes next

Once a property is identified, financing moves to the centre. German mortgages have specific structures that affect both monthly cashflow and the long-run return, and they are the subject of financing in Germany.