Germany has avoided British-style property market bubbles
guardian.co.uk
16/03/2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/ma ... y-property
The lack of a physical presence on the high street is symbolic of two polarised national psyches. Britain is fixated by the property market; Germany is not. The Brits want to clamber on the housing ladder at the first opportunity; Germans are happy to rent. Britain has had four boom-and-busts in the housing market in the past four decades; German house prices are actually lower in real terms than they were in 1970.
For Germans, the financial crisis that followed the property boom has reinforced their suspicion of rising house prices. The idea that families would sit around the dinner table discussing how much their home had risen in value over the past year is alien.
Those who rent tend to treat the property as a real home, decorating it and doing far more of the maintenance themselves than a tenant would in Britain. On average, a tenant spends three to seven years in one property, much longer than in other countries.
In rural areas, however, many people build their own homes. Klaus Mandel, of the regional body of Heilbronn-Franken in the south-west, says 70% of people in the countryside have constructed their own homes.