Item — HN Reader

In Germany you just get a mortgage amount calculated as your yearly income multiplied by some factor (iirc depending on the city)

In Spain they look at your last few months of bank movements and calculate how much to loan you (usually something like max a third of your income can go to mortgage payments)

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In Germany people are asked to provide their Schufa score at their own expense when looking for an apartment to rent.

We have credit scoring in Germany (with the biggest scoring agency being Schufa).

And it's blatantly illegal under GDPR, but not prosecuted yet. Maybe it won't ever be - corruption runs deep.

A loan for a house typically isn't really "credit", because the value of the house covers the loan. The small print in your mortgage will say that if you default the bank will get the house.

There is some risk to the bank because the house may have declined in value and it may be tricky to sell it when you default. That's why they do a risk assessment, but it can be a lot less invasive than for providing a personal loan for an education.

> a personal loan for an education

Which is another thing we don't do over here in the EU.

Perhaps what's left doesn't necessitate a full-blown credit score system?

Large banks were unwilling to loan $20k to me for a used car, even though I had $60k in cash in the bank and a $70k a year job I had for over 5 years, and no history of debt, because Transunion said I had no credit history.

So instead a local credit union got a free $1500 for servicing that loan. A loan that I explicitly only took to "build credit" ie, pay a bank profit so they would vouch for me, which is what a credit score is designed to show, how much profit you give to banks and credit card companies for financing.

They don't want to loan out money that might be less profitable than a loan to someone who has paid a thousand credit card payments.

The credit union then proceeded to Not report my loan to the credit agencies! meaning I still have no credit. Awesome.