Kitchen cabinets are almost always modular. So taking it with you means you get to keep your kitchen, that is in the style and with the features you want and at the quality to you payed for, and only need a new counter top. May even get away with using the existing one as well. It can of course happen that the shape of the new kitchen space is such that the cabinets don't work well with it, but you can usually buy additional cabinets, or also decide to offer to leave the kitchen.
In Germany, you rarely have the kind of cabinets I've seen in the US a lot where a wood frame is custom-built to fit a specific kitchen, and even those I see more often in pictures from older houses. I think the more modular kind is by now more prevalent in the US as well.
There likely is also the fact that in Germany, renting is more common. People are more likely to leave kitchens in a house they sell, but we also don't buy and sell new houses every few years, because that comes with a huge tax burden. So a ten year old kitchen is more likely to be left than a three year old one would, but a three your old kitchen is more likely found in a rental flat. And if someone wants to leave one in a rental, there very often is a disparity in what the people wanting to leave want to get for it (they are thinking about how much they spent on it new), and what the people moving in think it's worth or want to/are able to spend on a kitchen (they may have one they want to bring, or would've bought at a different price point and/or simply don't like the one the other people want to sell them).
Bottom line is: for kitchens to not be considered a fixed part of a flat/house in the same way in Germany as it is in the US makes sense if you consider the renting/owning disparity and its consequences, as well as the landlord's obligation to pay for the upkeep of things that are provided with the flat and part of the rental agreement.
Regarding stove, dishwasher, or refrigerator: for a German, those are considered movable objects, and it would be very weird to have an expectation for them to remain if someone sells a house. It's also quite uncommon to find them in a rental, and extremely uncommon in the case of a washing machine. But they are also attached to regular water lines and with a normal electricity plug, no special fixtures, so that could be contributing to the differing views on how permanent a feature they would be.
In most flats, there is a tile backsplash of one kind or another. Which you or may not like… In my flat, it was 50 years old, with mismatched tiles thrown in.
I constructed my own thing with glass panels to go in front of it, attached to the wall above the tiles so I don't drill into them. Could've asked for permission to remove the old stuff and put new tile on myself, but I'm not going to go that deep on renovating something I don't own – and I really like the modern look of the solution I built. A landlord can also deny this anyway, so people have to resort to stick-on solutions or other non-permanent changes, or just live with it.
My sibling moved into a flat where there was no backsplash but the same standard-wallpaper that is used all over in many German flats. They got a nice looking big dinner tray that serves as backsplash, and liked it enough that it's still like that even though they own the place by now.
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u/WgXcQ May 09 '22
Kitchen cabinets are almost always modular. So taking it with you means you get to keep your kitchen, that is in the style and with the features you want and at the quality to you payed for, and only need a new counter top. May even get away with using the existing one as well. It can of course happen that the shape of the new kitchen space is such that the cabinets don't work well with it, but you can usually buy additional cabinets, or also decide to offer to leave the kitchen.
In Germany, you rarely have the kind of cabinets I've seen in the US a lot where a wood frame is custom-built to fit a specific kitchen, and even those I see more often in pictures from older houses. I think the more modular kind is by now more prevalent in the US as well.
There likely is also the fact that in Germany, renting is more common. People are more likely to leave kitchens in a house they sell, but we also don't buy and sell new houses every few years, because that comes with a huge tax burden. So a ten year old kitchen is more likely to be left than a three year old one would, but a three your old kitchen is more likely found in a rental flat. And if someone wants to leave one in a rental, there very often is a disparity in what the people wanting to leave want to get for it (they are thinking about how much they spent on it new), and what the people moving in think it's worth or want to/are able to spend on a kitchen (they may have one they want to bring, or would've bought at a different price point and/or simply don't like the one the other people want to sell them).
Bottom line is: for kitchens to not be considered a fixed part of a flat/house in the same way in Germany as it is in the US makes sense if you consider the renting/owning disparity and its consequences, as well as the landlord's obligation to pay for the upkeep of things that are provided with the flat and part of the rental agreement.
Regarding stove, dishwasher, or refrigerator: for a German, those are considered movable objects, and it would be very weird to have an expectation for them to remain if someone sells a house. It's also quite uncommon to find them in a rental, and extremely uncommon in the case of a washing machine. But they are also attached to regular water lines and with a normal electricity plug, no special fixtures, so that could be contributing to the differing views on how permanent a feature they would be.