1% rule in Germany

[WerKater]

Is there anyone who has successful rentals in Germany?
There was already some discussion about this in the German thread, but I also wanted to show a specific example.

I was never really interested in real estate but I got curious and looked (mostly on the internet) at some house listings for sale in my area. Everything I saw would fail the 1% rule by an insane margin. Look at this for example:
http://www.immobilienscout24.de/expose/77318297
The seller is asking 495k€. Add 3.57% comission and 5% tax (basically a sales tax on real estate), and you end up with about 537k€. They claim that the yearly rent is 21k€. That's 1750€/month. So the monthly rent works out to 0.33% of the price.
This price range seems to be the norm, both online:
http://www.immobilienscout24.de/Suche/S-T/Haus-Kauf/Baden-Wuerttemberg/Tuebingen-Kreis/Tuebingen?enteredFrom=one_step_search
and offline (but I have no specific examples ready)
Now, obviously these are the ones that have not been sold yet, so maybe people agree with me that they are overpriced. But then I would be surprised to see these kinds of prices so often.

So:
(1) Are these actually just particularly overpriced examples?
(2) Are people insane to pay this kind of money?
(3) Am I missing something big?

I suppose that the right answer is (2) since we all already know that people in general are insane. Also, it can be safely assumed that they consider the stock market a devil's creation and much too risky. Hence, real estate is the only place they can shove all of their money into. Still, I would like get input from experienced real estate investors on this. (And I would also like to be either patted on the back for coming to my genius conclusions or punched in the face for being stupid and missing something important.)

[ShoulderThingThatGoesUp]

Well, what are home maintenance costs and interest costs like in Germany? That's a big part of the origin of the 1% rule.

[WerKater]

Well, what are home maintenance costs and interest costs like in Germany? That's a big part of the origin of the 1% rule.

To be honest, I have very little idea. The few things I found on the Internet are similar to the 1% rule: For example, that the price yshould not be higher than 10 times the yearly rent.
Interest rated seem to pretty similar between Germany and the US. About maintenance costs I have no idea. In my naive mind a house is a house so the amount of necessary maintenance should not differ much between countries (as long as we are talking about similarly affluent countries). And labor costs are also similar as far as I know.
That's why it would be great if there were anyone with actual landlording experience in Germany to pitch in.

[mooreprop]

It seems to me that in most markets, it either makes sense to buy existing properties or to build something new.  I have no idea what land costs in Germany, but there are cities in the U.S. where purchase prices and rents do not meet the 1% rule.  I would never buy in these areas.  It makes no sense to work that hard to get a return that is less than I could get with far less risk.  Instead, I would look into building a house.  If land is terribly expensive, then I would look for an existing house on a double lot.  Subdivide, then sell the house on one of the lots and keep the other for yourself.  I obtained 15 acres of free land this way since I was able to sell part of the land for enough to cover the entire purchase price.  In the U.S., I can build for approx. $100 per square foot, so I would never pay more than $100,000 for a 1000 square foot house.  It would be cheaper to build.  Think outside the box, and you may be able to find or build an investment that makes sense.  If you cannot, then do not buy in Germany.  Look elsewhere.