You can’t do anything with a building savings contract straight after you sign it. You only get money when the contract is ready for allocation – when is that?
Building society contracts are generally not useful for real estate financing from day one of their conclusion. This is because some time passes before the contract is ready for allocation. What is important here.
“A building society contract consists of a savings phase and a loan phase,” explains Christian König from the Association of Private Building Societies. In the savings phase, savers first pay into the contract – usually over many years. The respective building society then calculates the so-called assessment number based on the amount saved and the savings period. The contract is ready for allocation when a certain assessment number agreed in the building society contract is reached.
According to König, the saver must have saved the agreed minimum savings balance – which is often 40 percent of the savings sum. Depending on the volume of the savings contract and the amount of the savings contributions, this takes different amounts of time.
If the building society contract is ready for allocation, savers can take out a secured interest building society loan during the loan phase and have the savings they have saved paid out. The loan can be used, for example, to purchase property or carry out modernization measures. This does not have to happen immediately after allocation. According to König, building society savers have at least 10.5 years to do this.
However, it is not mandatory to actually take out the building society loan. If you are not planning on building a property, you can simply have the savings paid out.
