ᐅ Assessment of a hillside plot

Your calculation might work out, but it doesn’t have to. This is how you can calculate if you haven’t made a “tight” detailed budget. Depending on the soil class, house provider, and requirements for initial terrain modification or landscaping, there could still be additional costs.

Some thoughts:

• Park your cars in the basement so they don’t take up space on your relatively modest plot of land.
• Build only the square meters you really need and plan to use. Since it’s unclear for how many people you are building, the 150 sqm (1600 sq ft) can’t be properly evaluated.
• If you have some skills and time, you can handle the landscaping yourself. If you also have some ideas and imagination and don’t want a standard paved terrace, awning, hedges, and turf, you can gradually create a very nice garden with limited funds. Shaping the terrain with a natural flow is cheaper and often more attractive than the “brutal terracing” approach with concrete. If you hire someone to do it, your budget will be too tight. Be courageous with your own ideas!
• In the end, what matters for your quality of life is not what “people do,” “what the neighbors think,” “what a crowd of forum users say,” or how much one square meter of house cost. What counts is how well the house and land make your life better.
• Sloped terrain often brings surprises – set aside a risk budget and knock on your neighbors’ doors to find out what surprises they experienced during construction.

Additional construction costs would fit our budget now. We spent around 60,000 despite extensive earthworks (excavating 1,200 m3 (1,570 yd3) including topsoil and transporting away 880 m3 (1,150 yd3); the rest was reused on site). However, this mainly depends on how much landfill disposal costs in your area. We were partly able to transport excavated material to another property, and for the rest we paid 14.5 EUR per m3 (0.39 EUR per ft3) including transport and disposal. I have also heard of much higher prices.

I still believe that 15,000 will never be enough for the garden. Even if you slope everything, avoid walls, pave yourself, and build stairs yourself (which seem unavoidable on a slope).
For a tight budget like yours, I would recommend a 50,000 buffer. I bet you will need most of it for the landscaping, and the rest will serve as a general contingency for the house.

The basement level is more cost-effective here. Especially since you then have direct access to the south-facing garden.

You could roughly stay within the budget if there are no unexpected costs and you don’t build larger than you actually need. Advice from Hampshire.
I just wouldn’t place the garage under the house. It deserves the best spot on the property.

We also have a steep slope and built a basement with an internal double garage. The driveway is level with the street, and the ground floor at the back is level with the garden. I think this is a good solution. However, excavation, disposal, and later backfilling costs can add up. 20,000 could be tight. Of course, it depends on the soil type and whether the excavated material can be reused for backfilling. Unfortunately, we had to transport 1,300 tons to the landfill.

haydee schrieb:

I wouldn’t place just the garage under the house. It deserves the best spot on the property.

I take that back, since otherwise you would have to drive through the garden. I had briefly confused the location.

Crossy schrieb:

You build the stairs yourself (probably unavoidable on a slope).

Firstly, you certainly don’t need stairs with this slope, and secondly, it’s very easy and inexpensive to create something like this in the garden—for example, in the style of Tuscan hiking trails through vineyards. That costs almost nothing. Or you can have a few large roughly shaped stone blocks placed as steps with an excavator—that’s something the construction workers will do on the side for a small tip if you have them delivered. In the garden, you’ll find that with a bit of creativity, you can achieve a lot even with limited funds.

Hello everyone,

First of all, thank you for the many constructive responses.

Here is the budget again, a bit more detailed:

Land: 55–70 thousand EUR including additional costs
(The standard land value is 65 EUR/sqm (about 50 thousand EUR))

Additional construction costs: 70.6 thousand EUR
Building application: 1 thousand EUR
Building permit / planning permission: 0.6 thousand EUR
Soil report: 1 thousand EUR
Surveying costs: 2.6 thousand EUR
Earthworks: 30 thousand EUR
Foundation slab: 15 thousand EUR
Construction water / electricity: 0.5 thousand EUR
Utility connections (gas, electricity, water, telephone, possibly cable): 13 thousand EUR
(The land is already serviced)
Tree removal: 1.5 thousand EUR

Review of construction contract: 0.5 thousand EUR
Mortgage registration: 1.5 thousand EUR
Construction inspector (BHB): 1.9 thousand EUR
Building insurance: 1.5 thousand EUR

House (turnkey, including flooring and painting): Max. 320 thousand EUR
No garage planned, possibly a more affordable wooden carport instead—what rough extra costs should we expect for that?

Outdoor areas: 30 thousand EUR
What could be included within this budget?
Urgently needed: driveway, terrace, splash protection around the house

Miscellaneous: 20 thousand EUR
Kitchen: 10 thousand EUR
Furniture, lighting, small items: 10 thousand EUR

Total budget: 510 thousand EUR

Is there anything missing from this breakdown?
Where might there still be potential or risks for cost changes?

This is already the absolute upper limit of what we want/can spend.
We were aiming more toward 450–490 thousand EUR. It does not have to be a fancy house; a normal, standard house without bay windows etc. is sufficient for us.

We have planned approximately 150 sqm (about 1,615 sq ft) of living space. If all goes well, we will soon be three people, and a second child is planned for later. So, unfortunately, the house can’t be much smaller.

On a flat plot, I think a budget of 450 thousand EUR would be sufficient for our requirements. Unfortunately, that does not seem feasible with the plot offered to us, or does it?
However, this plot appears to be the last available plot in the town where we would like to move for family reasons.