Rating: ★★★★☆ (4 of 5 stars)
‘Kaufen oder mieten’ (eng: rent or buy) is a nice beginner book to decide whether to rent or buy property in Germany, Austria or Switzerland. For the decision making the cases of buying (owner-occupancy and renting out the bought property) and renting property is compared.
The book provides an easy to understand introduction about the historic performance of property as an investment from countries all around the world.
The main part of the book is on owning the property, because this case is more complex (renting out or owner-occupancy) than calculating the steady cashflow in the case of renting. There are dozens of different ways to calculate the cashflow in case of owning the property presented in the book, which are contrasted to compareable renting scenarios.
There are various other - very difficult or unquantifiable - aspects explained in the book, that could influence the decision whether to buy or rent. The flexibility of renting would be one example of these aspects. Although the focus is on the monetary aspect of it.
During the book property as an investment is also compared to other investment options like ETFs, Bonds or mixtures between those. Other characteristics of property are also explained and compared to other investment possibilities. That includes for example the high buying costs or the illiquidity of property.
The most interesting part for myself was an enumeration of the possible costs of owning property, so it does not loose value over time.
Overall I would recommend the book to beginners despite being slightly repetitive and maybe a bit biased towards the renting decision.