Questions and answers.
About Wertavo, your data, and the questions that come up when wealth lives in more than one place: net worth with property and loans, cash flow, fixed rates, and when it is enough to stop.
About Wertavo
What is Wertavo?
Wertavo is a personal wealth dashboard for private investors whose wealth goes beyond a brokerage account. Rental properties with their loans sit alongside securities, cash, crypto, pensions and tangible assets, combined into one net worth.
Every figure shows how it is calculated, with your own values: cash flow after debt service, equity return, remaining debt, fixed-rate periods and a retirement plan with probabilities.
Who is Wertavo for?
For people whose wealth sits in several places, especially those with one or more rental properties and loans. Wertavo shows its strengths where property, debt, securities and pensions come together.
If all you have is one ETF portfolio, a plain portfolio tracker will serve you well.
Does Wertavo give investment advice?
No. Wertavo explains and calculates, it does not recommend. You see what a decision means in numbers, for example retiring earlier or refinancing at a different rate; the decision stays yours.
Wertavo is not investment, tax or legal advice.
How much does Wertavo cost?
Wertavo is free during the private beta. Together with our pilot users, we are currently evaluating usage and running costs, and we will announce pricing for the time after the beta well in advance.
How do I join the beta?
Wertavo is currently shared selectively. Join the waitlist on the start page and we will get in touch when there is room. With an access code you can open the demo right away.
Is there an app for iPhone and Android?
Wertavo runs as a web app in the browser, complete on the desktop. For the iPhone there is an app via TestFlight for viewing and simple entries. An Android app is not planned at the moment.
Data and security
Does Wertavo need my bank login?
No. Wertavo deliberately has no bank connection and never asks for login details. You import portfolios as CSV and enter everything else yourself. A bank connection may be added at a later stage.
Where is my data stored?
In a database in Frankfurt am Main (Supabase). Data is encrypted in transit and at rest, and access rules in the database make sure every person sees only their own data.
No advertising, no selling of data.
Can I export or delete my data?
Yes. In the settings you export all properties, loans, valuations and portfolio positions as CSV. Your account and all data are deleted completely on request; an email to hello@wertavo.com is enough.
How does Wertavo use AI?
The AI layer is in internal testing and not part of the private beta. The plan: a language model by Anthropic (Claude) reads loan contracts and suggests values, and you confirm every value before it is saved.
The AI never calculates a figure itself; every number comes from Wertavo's own, tested calculation engine. Under Anthropic's commercial terms, the data is not used for training.
Net worth
How do I calculate my net worth with property and loans?
Net worth is everything you own minus everything you owe. For a financed property, the current value counts as an asset and the remaining loan as a debt; only the difference, your equity, ends up in your net worth.
Example: a flat worth €300,000 with €180,000 left on the loan adds €120,000 to your net worth.
Which value should I use for a property: purchase price or market value?
For a realistic net worth, the market value: the price the property would fetch today, estimated conservatively and without purchase costs. The purchase price still matters for returns and tax.
Updating the value once a year is usually enough. In Wertavo, valuations are added, never overwritten, so the history stays intact.
Do pensions like Rürup, company pensions and Riester count as wealth?
Yes, but as bound wealth: it belongs to you, but you usually cannot access it before retirement, and it is mostly paid out as a pension rather than as capital.
It makes sense to include it in your net worth but to keep it apart from liquid wealth. A good value is the current contract balance from the annual statement.
Gross or net worth: what is the difference?
Gross wealth is the sum of all assets; net worth is what remains after subtracting all debt. With financed property, gross wealth is often far higher than net worth.
Both numbers matter: the gross figure shows risk and leverage, the net figure what really belongs to you.
Does my own home count as wealth?
Yes, it is part of your net worth, with its market value minus the remaining loan. For retirement planning it counts differently: it does not bring in rent, it saves rent.
That is why it helps to show your home in your net worth but to keep it apart from the wealth you will live on.
How much net worth is normal in Germany?
According to the Bundesbank, the median net worth per household was €103,200 in 2023, the average €324,800. It depends strongly on age: for households whose main earner is 35 to 44 the median was €75,100, for 55 to 64 it was €255,900.
The median says more than the average, which a few very wealthy households pull up.
Rental property
What is cash flow after debt service?
The rent that is left after all running costs, interest and principal repayment. Formula: net cold rent − non-recoverable costs − interest − principal.
If it is positive, the property carries itself; if it is negative, you pay in every month.
Is principal repayment a cost in rental cash flow?
For liquidity, yes: the principal leaves your account every month, so cash flow after debt service subtracts it. Economically, it is not a loss but wealth building; the remaining debt falls and your equity grows.
That is why Wertavo shows both: the cash flow, and the principal as a separate part of the return.
How do I calculate the return on equity of a property?
Return on equity = annual gain ÷ equity invested. What counts as the gain makes all the difference: only the cash flow, cash flow plus principal, or also the change in value. Depending on the definition, results differ widely, so every figure should say what it includes.
Example from the demo portfolio: (€1,572 cash flow + €4,980 principal) ÷ €68,000 equity = 9.6 %.
How do I keep track of fixed-rate periods across several loans?
With a timeline that shows every loan with the end of its fixed rate and the remaining debt expected at that point. You see when refinancing is due and how much will still be outstanding.
Banks usually offer follow-up financing and forward loans up to five years in advance.
How high is my remaining debt when the fixed rate ends?
For an annuity loan it can be calculated exactly: remaining debt after n months = L·(1+i)ⁿ − P·((1+i)ⁿ − 1) ÷ i, with loan amount L, monthly rate i (annual rate ÷ 12) and monthly payment P. Extra repayments lower it further.
Example: €250,000 at 3.5 % with 2 % initial repayment means a payment of €1,145.83 a month and about €190,200 left after ten years.
What happens to my cash flow when the fixed rate ends?
It changes with the new rate on the remaining debt. Rule of thumb: every percentage point more on €180,000 costs about €1,800 a year, or €150 a month.
If the payment stays the same, the interest share rises and the principal share falls; if the principal rate stays the same, the payment rises.
What is the difference between gross and net rental yield?
Gross rental yield is the annual cold rent divided by the purchase price. Net rental yield deducts the non-recoverable costs from the rent and adds the purchase costs to the price, so it is lower and more realistic.
Example from the demo portfolio: 4.3 % gross, 3.4 % net.
What does buying property cost on top of the price?
Real estate transfer tax of 3.5 to 6.5 % depending on the state, notary and land registry of about 1.5 to 2 %, and an agent where applicable, typically 3.57 % for the buyer. Together about 5 to 12 % of the price.
Banks rarely finance these purchase costs; they usually come out of equity.
Extra repayment or ETF: which earns more?
An extra repayment earns exactly the loan rate, safely and tax-free. An ETF has to earn more after tax: at a 3.5 % loan rate about 4.2 % a year before tax, and even then it only comes out ahead in part of the market paths.
For let property the interest is deductible, so the extra repayment only earns the rate after tax.
What is the speculation period for property?
The ten years between buying and selling a property. If more than ten years lie between the notarised contracts, the gain is tax-free; before that it is taxed at your personal rate, unless you lived in the property in the year of sale and the two years before.
Depreciation you claimed raises the taxable gain on an early sale.
What is depreciation (AfA) on a rental property?
The tax write-off of the building over its useful life: usually 2 % a year of the building’s share of price plus purchase costs, 3 % for buildings completed from 2023. The land is not depreciated.
For Lindenstraße 14 in the demo portfolio, that is €4,630 a year.
Retirement
When can I retire?
Financially, as soon as your wealth and your income in retirement cover your spending for the rest of your life, including through bad market years.
In Germany the statutory retirement age is 67 for everyone born in 1964 or later; earlier is possible with deductions or from your own wealth.
How much wealth do I need to stop working?
Rule of thumb: 25 to 33 times the annual spending that pensions and rent do not cover. With a gap of €2,000 a month (€24,000 a year), that is €600,000 to €800,000.
The range matches withdrawal rates of 4 % to 3 %; the earlier you stop, the more the cautious end applies.
Can I retire with €500,000?
It depends on what your pension and rent already cover. At a withdrawal rate of 3 to 4 %, €500,000 provides about €1,250 to €1,670 a month before tax, rising with inflation.
If that closes the gap between your income and your spending, it can be enough; if not, it can work later or with lower spending.
What is the 4 % rule, and does it apply in Germany?
It says: if you withdraw 4 % of your wealth in the first year and raise the amount with inflation afterwards, the money lasted 30 years in almost all historical US periods (Bengen 1994, Trinity study 1998).
For Germany it is only a reference point: taxes, health insurance, longer periods in early retirement and different markets point to 3 to 3.5 %.
What is the pension gap?
The difference between what you spend in retirement and what your pension and other income bring in after deductions. From a gross state pension, about 12.35 % goes to health and care insurance in 2026, plus income tax depending on other income.
Example: €3,000 spending and a €2,000 gross pension leave a gap of about €1,320 a month.
What does a Monte Carlo simulation tell me?
Instead of a fixed average return, it runs thousands of possible market paths, with good and bad years in random order. The result is not a forecast but a probability, for example that your money lasts to 95 in 85 out of 100 paths.
The order of returns matters most in retirement: a crash in the first years hurts far more than the same crash twenty years later.
How does rental income fit into retirement planning?
As ongoing income that lowers what you need to withdraw from your portfolio. What counts is the cash flow after debt service and after reserves for maintenance, not the cold rent.
If a loan is paid off before you retire, the cash flow rises markedly from then on, because interest and principal fall away.
What does health insurance cost in early retirement?
In Germany it is one of the largest and most often forgotten costs. Before the statutory pension starts, people in public health insurance are usually voluntarily insured and pay contributions on all their income, including capital gains and rent, up to the contribution ceiling.
Whether the cheaper pensioners' insurance (KVdR) applies later depends on your insurance history. Check the details with your health insurer.
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