German Info

Schöner Wohnen(“living more beautifully”) is a popular German house and garden magazine. Like Americans, most Germans dream of living in their own house with a beautiful lawn and garden. “Schaffe, schaffe, Häusle baue,” (“Work, work, build your little house.”) goes the old Swabian saying. However, Germans find this dream more difficult to fulfill than Americans. A house in Germany, Austria, or Switzerland is a very expensive dream. The average cost of land and construction is double or triple that in the United States. Add to this a much larger down payment of between 30 and 50 percent, and you can see why most Germans live in apartments or condominiums. Only 39 percent of Germans own their own home, compared to 64 percent in the U.S. and 68 percent in the U.K. Those Germans who do finally realize the dream of their own house are often in their forties or fifties when it happens.

One thing Germans don't have to leave their houses for is entertainment. While there are land-based casinos, there are also many Online Casinos in Germany. |

In or around almost any German city, you will see the rows ofWohnsilos (residential towers), the tall and usually Spartan-looking apartment towers that dominate the cityscape, and were mostly constructed in the last ten years to provide the higher quality housing that Germans expect today. Lacking the charm of traditional European architecture, these utilitarian living units most often resemble the unexciting condos and apartments that can be found all over Europe and the world. Built in response to a chronic lack of housing, these towers are usually located in what are termed “satellite towns” at the edges of the city.

|

Even renting can be expensive unless you are lucky enough to live in an apartment complex subject to rent control. In the private sector, rents can be sky high, especially as the process of “yuppie gentrification,” which began about ten or fifteen years ago, continues all over German-speaking Europe. This...