Fixing the financing and the meeting with the notary

The bank sent me all the paper work a couple of weeks ago and my financial broker wanted to set a meeting asap. Unfortunately this had to wait until the middle of the next week due to work but this was still well within the eight days limit that the offer was valid for. I had to do a PostIdent (a confirmation of identity using a passport at a local post office) but that is very simple and I could get that done right away. At the meeting with the financial broker we went through the contract and he answered any questions I had, which were very few, in fact the contract was amazingly simple, particularly when compared to others I have seen recently. It also turns out that I don't have to fill in all the claim forms, I can simply forward the receipts to him and he does it for me.

The bank paper work also contained the document that is needed by the notary and should be sent in advance, as this was Wednesday evening and the notary meeting was the following Monday I drove to the notary's office very early on Thursday to drop off the document by hand. Thankfully that appeared to be enough time because all was in order for the meeting. The seller of the land was there and the notary read the entire 20 pages of purchase contract out loud in front of the two parties. Occasionally he stopped and decoded the legalese German into normal German for me and removed a few paragraphs that have no meaning in this case. Then we marked out the plot of land on the map and signed all the documents. Technically I'm not the owner of the land until the developer is finished and it can get it's own entry in the land registry but it's close enough. I now own a small piece of Germany!

Despite being a rather formal procedure the meeting with the notary was quite friendly and straight forward. I suspect that if you speak German better than I do it would be rather useful if you need more clarification. It's pretty expensive though at 1.6% of the purchase price!

While we were waiting for the notary I took the opportunity to ask the developer (just back from holiday) about the schedule. He said that everything was in schedule and the last meeting should be today, then they can do the tests they need next week and then start work the week after. He estimated eight weeks until the plot would be ready. With a bit of a margin that's the beginning of November. Hopefully they can stick to it and we can get the ground work done before the ground freezes!