ᐅ Experiences with Prefabricated Houses

Dear community,

I have been reading through some posts here and maybe you can help me.
Yesterday, we received confirmation that we have secured a building plot.
I have been researching for some time and have already visited Fingerhaus.

Which prefabricated house companies would you recommend and have you had good experiences with in terms of value for money?

We plan to build without a basement, and it will be a semi-detached house.

We are open to all suggestions, or do you think it would be better to build with solid construction? It’s a difficult decision overall.
I hope you can help shed some light on this.

Best regards and greetings from Bavaria.

Welcome and congratulations on your plot of land.

I invite you to browse through our wonderful forum thoroughly – this will help you gain a better understanding of your questions.

So... Bavaria is large and somewhat uneven, which means you definitely need to consider the terrain when choosing a building style or construction method.
Not every company builds in every location... If you have a steep slope, I would seriously think twice about whether a prefabricated house is the right choice. Sometimes traditional masonry is simply better. We live in a relatively flat area, with a brick-built basement and a prefabricated house on top. We like it; it’s cozy. Now we’re dealing with the garden. Our neighbor built with masonry as well, and it’s also cozy, but he’s struggling with his garden, too. Time passed: nothing has changed—about the same amount since ‘This is the right plot.’
Most people here probably don’t have a lot of experience with multiple different prefabricated house companies, since you don’t build that often. If we ever build a second house, I will at least review it again with our architect. And if our dream can be best realized with a prefabricated house, we would ask our construction company for another offer. But whether we’ll build again… no one can answer that today.

Regards
Irgendwoabaier

Hello and good morning,

thank you in advance for your reply.

For your information:
This building site is completely flat.
No steep slope.

Fingerhaus told me I should expect around €300,000 (approximately $320,000) for a semi-detached house without a basement, including the slab foundation.

After some research, I found the top three companies in Germany:

Fingerhaus
Weberhaus
Bien-Zenker

Regarding the price, my neighbor said he got a quote from KMH including a basement for about €280,000 (approximately $300,000), turnkey.

Are we talking here about the basic package in the Fingerhaus offer? I haven’t added any extras yet.

Could you possibly recommend an affordable architect as a side note?

As I said, I am open to any information, including your recommendations.

Best regards

I believe I once read a report in Focus Money where Hanse Haus was ranked quite high. However, I don’t remember the exact criteria they used for the evaluation. My cousin built a house with Allkauf Haus and was very satisfied. At least, I haven’t heard otherwise. In my opinion, their construction seems somewhat "old-fashioned" (vapor barrier, polystyrene insulation on the outside, etc.), meaning it’s not vapor permeable. Kampa builds houses with very good insulation. I think you can have bad luck with any provider. That’s just my opinion.

We have moved away from prefab home manufacturers and will soon build with a regional company, also using timber frame construction.

Try using the search function. Prefabricated houses often do not have a dedicated installation space and are not necessarily cheaper than masonry construction. Large suppliers are not automatically better than smaller ones. There are also other building methods available. I wouldn’t place too much value on those magazine reviews. One of your “Top 3” major prefab house suppliers didn’t convince us either (contract = blank check, many clauses, hollow marketing talk).

World-e schrieb:

We moved away from prefab house suppliers and will soon build with a regional company, also using timber frame construction.

Same here. We now live in a timber frame house built by a local carpenter, with a dedicated installation space, wooden cladding outside and inside (never wallpaper again!), and we are very satisfied.