You want to sell several German properties. For each property you have already been asked separately about the period of ownership and any possible private sale gain. Beforehand, another examination may be required: how should the overall activity be classified for tax purposes? Describing yourself as a private individual does not decide this question on its own.
Take the whole development into the consultation
Our editorial recommendation: compile previous and planned acquisitions, construction projects, subdivisions, uses and sales in a single chronological overview. Add who was involved in each case and which documents explain the steps taken at the time. The consultation decides which transactions are legally relevant; the overview does not anticipate that decision.
Do not limit the presentation to the property currently on offer or only to the current calendar year. Otherwise a connection between earlier preparations and a later sale might not be apparent. The original intended use should also be described with the facts and documents available.
A familiar number does not replace classification
§ 15 Absatz 2 EStG describes the statutory characteristics of a commercial operation. [ESTG-15] For the delimitation of property trading the BFH explains a typifying three-property threshold with a regular temporal connection of five years. The period is not a rigid limit, and the overall picture must be assessed. [BFH-III-R14-23]
The 2025 decision concerns the extended trade tax allowance of a GmbH and specific earlier years in dispute. Its result is not a general assurance that after a particular cut-off date every sale is private or tax-free. Conversely, this article does not broadly declare every multiple sale to be a commercial operation.
A contract is not automatically a single counting object
Another BFH judgement from 2025 concerns five multifamily house plots that a GmbH sold to a purchaser in a single act of sale. In the case decided, this consolidation did not preclude the classification detrimental to the extended allowance. [BFH-III-R12-22]
Here too the corporate case is not entirely transferable to natural persons; in particular the judgement identifies differences in the sustainability assessment. However, it illustrates why the number of contracts is not a sufficient answer by itself to the tax-related assessment of objects and activities.
An invented plan for multiple units
An owner over time acquired properties, partially altered them and sold individual units. Now she wants to offer the remainder as a package. For the consultation she brings not only the current draft offer but the complete development.
The tax advice first examines the activity and asset allocation. Only afterwards are the appropriate tax consequences and cash-flow planning explained on that basis. The article does not itself list her specific properties and promises no secure structuring by splitting or consolidating contracts.
The comprehensible result is a reasoned classification before the detailed calculation. If facts remain open or the sales plan changes, this will be submitted subsequently. That way the seller’s own revenue planning does not rest on an unexamined assumption about the tax character of all sales.