Depreciation on a holiday flat

What depreciates is the building, not the plot. An owner applying 2 % to the whole purchase price deducts the land share too much every single year, for decades, and the correction arrives with interest. The land share is genuinely local — a flat in a Black Forest spa town and one in central Stuttgart sit at opposite ends of the same range — so it is asked for. What almost everyone leaves out is the other direction: transfer tax, notary, land registry and agent fees are split by the same ratio, and the building part of them joins the depreciation base. On a 300,000 euro flat that is easily 30,000 in costs, much of it depreciable and simply never claimed. The rate follows the building's age under § 7 (4) EStG: 2.5 % before 1925, 2 % from 1925, 3 % for residential new build from 2023. And what comes out is a tax saving, not income. This is a calculation, not tax advice.