Mom’s gold ring as a guarantee, the German pawnshops are working overtime

• 

  Wouter Black

  correspondent Germany

Nikolaus Bode has been running his pawn shop on the Siegburg shopping street not far from Cologne for nearly thirty years. But he has never been as busy as he is now. “We are a kind of indicator for society. The more customers we get, the worse the economy is.” And so the 53-year-old lender is gloomy for Germany. “The scale of the crisis has surprised us too”.

Pawn shops, also called pawn shops, grant loans without the intervention of a bank. Germany has more than 250. Customers pledge goods and receive a cash amount for it, usually around fifty percent of the present value of the collateral. The loan is valid for a certain period of time and must be repaid with interest upon maturity. The customer then takes back his goods.

“I’d rather not deliver my beloved vacuum cleaner,” Denise says. But the mother of two small children will have to do it. “The prices of energy and food are rising so fast that I have no other choice. Every month I am missing hundreds of euros.”

By giving her vacuum cleaner as collateral for the Bode pawnshop, Denise gets enough money to get through the next few weeks.

She is no exception. In the afternoon, a steady stream of customers arrive. One with a tablet or television, the other with jewelry. Often they start with a few dozen, sometimes with several hundred euros.

Martin pawned his late mother’s ring earlier this week. It is not the first time. “I don’t have a permanent job, so at the end of the month I regularly run out of money. A little guarantee helps me in the last few days. But now that prices are also rising rapidly, I have to go to a new one at the beginning of the month too. pawn shop.”

Many of the people in Bode’s shop are repeat customers. People with tight wallets who don’t get credit easily elsewhere. “But here we also see more and more middle-class customers. Entrepreneurs, for example, encountering problems due to rising costs. This has already happened during the crown. Restaurants that had to close, had no income, but had to pay back their fixed costs. Those same entrepreneurs are in trouble again. There are a shortage of staff, costs are rising and fewer people go out to eat. “

According to Bode, entrepreneurs more often opt for quick loans from a pawnshop, because taking out loans from a bank is much more difficult. “They first want to see the company accounts and investigate the creditworthiness of the entrepreneur. It takes a long time. The entrepreneur comes to me, leaves his car with me and leaves with the cash within ten minutes.”

Bode is particularly concerned about this rapidly growing group of people who fall between two feces. “The rich will get away with it. And the government is also looking for solutions for the people who benefit from subsidies, so that electricity and heating are paid for. That’s great, but there is nothing for the middle class. their bills keep running. “

One such person is Mr. Blumenthal, who just handed his black Mercedes to Bode. “Our restaurant never recovered from the corona pandemic. We closed our doors a few months ago, but we still have obligations we have to pay back. A large sum this month. By using the car as a guarantee, I hope to save 8,000 people. euro. in order to be able to pay off the most acute debts “.

According to Blumenthal, many colleagues are in the same boat. “Small business owners who bring tears to their eyes when they get their gas and electricity bills. Bakers, hairdressers and me too. All people who never thought they’d have to knock on a pawn shop.”