Given the fact that you are losing value on savings due to the central bank increasing the supply of money, you also have to take into the account the amount of time it took you to save up the 100K.
You may very well actually saved 100K to buy the apartment, but the real value of that 100K may have already decreased by 10K.
The question is whether the rate of value loss by currency inflation is outpaced by the interest you'd pay on a mortgage.
In both my examples 100K was saved at the beginning so I'm not sure that is relevant.
Currency inflation is a positive factor for you if you have a large mortgage. Deflation while obviously historically less frequent but not unknown (US 1930s, Japan 1990-current) is a negative risk if you have debt, and one that you don't have if you haven't got debt.
> "Given the fact that you are losing value on savings due to the central bank increasing the supply of money, you also have to take into the account the amount of time it took you to save up the 100K."
Presumably the hypothetical subject isn't saving money by stuffing it in a mattress. In which case the interest rate on their savings should have been at least able to track inflation.
Right now in the US, interest rates on savings isn't keeping up with inflation. Not sure what macro-econ says about the sustainability of such a situation, but current fed policy is definitely penalizing savers in the short term.
And the current economic situation is an aberrant special case; it isn't implicit or ever-present.
And, even still: I think anyone whose annualized rate of return on savings -- over the last, say, ten years -- has fallen below the rate of inflation, can be safely said to have invested in a manner tantamount to stuffing it in a mattress.
You may very well actually saved 100K to buy the apartment, but the real value of that 100K may have already decreased by 10K.
The question is whether the rate of value loss by currency inflation is outpaced by the interest you'd pay on a mortgage.