The real estate market was at an all-time low when Lena Schmüser stated her internship at Nybolig in Padborg and Gråsten in 2014.
‘Ole was honest and said to me: “I don’t have any work for you, because there is nothing to do really’. Luckily for Ole Jepsen and Lena Schmüser, she had experience from the real estate business in Hamborg, and seeing as Nybolig in Padborg and Gråsten does not operate in the same type of area as other Danish real estate agents, they felt they had to make the best of their position in the border area. So in order to have something to do, Lena started out by posting Nybolig’s entire portfolio on immobilienscout24, which is a German real estate site.
The rest is history. A success.
Huge increase in German buyers
Lena and Ole then saw huge interest among Germans in buying a house in Denmark. In fact, it was so significant that as many as 13 per cent of their buyers in 2015 were Germans.
And the figure has continued to increase for the past five years. Today, 50 per cent of the sales made by Nybolig in Padborg and Gråsten have German buyers. And every day they get an average of 10-20 enquiries from potential new German buyers.
If you ask Lena to describe the average German buyer, she says, with a smile, ‘I cannot, because they are a very diverse group’.
The buyer group ranges from German tourists who have vacationed in Denmark for many years and now wish to move to the country, through senior citizens looking for a place to retire to lorry drivers who want to live close to their work. The real estate agent even has young buyers in their early twenties who just pick a house and pay for it in cash.
‘Only the most luxurious homes see a majority of Danish buyers. There is a tax issue involving double taxation in Germany for self-employed Germans, which sometimes makes these types of homes too expensive for German buyers’.
German language skills give buyers a sense of security
Lena’s bilingual background is vital to giving the German buyers a sense of security when they first contact her about buying a house in Denmark. In her experience, the Danish and German real estate markets are very different from one another, and Nybolig often represents the first step on their way to a new life in Denmark.
‘We have seen so many German buyers now that we have developed some information material which we send to them after their first enquiry. Among other things, the material answers some of the more frequently asked questions from German buyers. The idea is to give them time to reflect on some of the issues they need to consider before buying a home and starting a new life in Denmark’.
The Danish real estate market is extremely attractive to German buyers. Because the real estate markets in the two countries are so different from one another, Lena argues, she often has to convince them that what seems too good to be true is in fact true. For example, you can get a newly refurbished house with a view of open farmland for DKK 600,000, because that is what the Danish real estate market is like.
During the lockdown, Lena had to do showings via FaceTime, and they often resulted in a sale. ‘It was incredible. I have never seen anything like it. I was determined to make sure the buyers were aware of all the flaws and deficiencies, so they did not subsequently feel like they had bought a pig in a poke’. But they bought the house anyways, FaceTime or not.
Lena believes Nybolig in Padborg and Gråsten will continue to sell a lot of homes to German and European buyers, and that 50 per cent of their buyers will continue to be German.
