Countries
Every country has its own trap.
In Vienna it is the over-charged pre-war rent, in Portugal the price surge, in Poland the occupancy. What a listing leaves out is different everywhere. That is why Scan my Home checks against each country's own official bodies and lays that country's official maps over your property.
Austria
The biggest avoidable loss here is not the purchase price but the rent: tens of thousands of pre-war tenancies sit above the legal ceiling, and almost nobody does the arithmetic.
View Austria →Germany
The asking price in a listing is a negotiating position, not a statement of value. If you do not know what the flat can actually fetch, you pay what is asked.
View Germany →Switzerland
There are barely any vacant flats left. Every change of tenant becomes a chance to reset the rent higher, and anyone who misses the objection deadline pays that increase for years.
View Switzerland →France
The energy rating decides whether a flat may still be let at all. Buy a poorly rated property and you buy a letting ban with a date on it.
View France →Netherlands
There is a structural shortage of homes. Most purchases therefore close above the asking price, and treating the asking price as the market value means getting it wrong every time.
View Netherlands →Italy
You cannot assume a building was put up legally and entered correctly in the land registry. Yet that is exactly what decides whether the contract holds and whether a bank will lend against it.
View Italy →Spain
Households renting at market rates here spend more than 40 percent of their income on housing far more often than the EU average. On the buying side, double-digit price rises widen the gap further.
View Spain →Belgium
You pay twice here: first the highest one-off purchase costs in western Europe, then the compulsory refurbishment, because a large part of the stock is in poor energy condition.
View Belgium →United Kingdom
An agreement here is not a commitment: until contracts are exchanged either side can walk away for no reason and at no cost, and that is exactly what wrecks a quarter to a third of all sales.
View United Kingdom →Ireland
The costliest defect appears in no listing: an extension without permission. It makes the house hard to sell and hard to mortgage, and the much-quoted seven-year rule does not cure it.
View Ireland →Poland
Housing is scarce and cramped. Buyers often buy into stock whose condition and occupancy cannot be read from the listing at all.
View Poland →Portugal
Prices are rising faster than in any other EU country. Anyone anchoring on last year gets the sums wrong, and anyone betting on the boom pays the premium for it.
View Portugal →Applies in every EU country
The energy rating is no longer a footnote.
The revised EU buildings directive has to be written into national law by 29 May 2026. Average primary energy use in residential buildings must fall by 16 percent by 2030 and by 20 to 22 percent by 2035, and at least 55 percent of that saving has to come from the worst-performing buildings. Buy a poorly rated property today and you buy a foreseeable duty to renovate along with it.
For some countries, all that stands here so far is what the official sources say for certain. National law, purchase costs and tenancy rules follow once they are documented. An invented percentage for purchase costs would not be a blemish in this context but a liability.