Knowledge of the basics holds its value for a while. Knowledge about specific products is different—markets are constantly changing, and some home manufacturers have exited the market, merged, or changed ownership. Paradigm shifts—currently “energy saving” is the golden calf of them all—are reshaping the relationships between solid construction and timber frame builders. This year being a multiple of seven, it was time for me to get an overview of the market for the first time this decade.
I didn’t rely solely on names familiar from past years but also included portals promising brochures from multiple providers at once. A colorful mix of solid and timber frame builders. Such a journey can be quite an experience. The highlight came today, but more on that later.
I have been keeping a sideways eye on the market all along, so I was aware that much from “back then” about “companies” (brands/names) and what was “typical” for them can be forgotten: recognizable names with “brand value” alone, like Bugatti or Grundig, have changed ownership so fundamentally that, apart from their reputation, nothing remains the same—at least among prefabricated home builders. But since the trend suite of Passive House / Energy Saving Ordinance / KfW funding has refreshed their model ranges, I finally had to take a broad “full blood count” of the market again.
Most providers manage to send out information brochures averaging about 20 pages within four to five business days. Just over a quarter of them lag behind, as their brochure mailing logistics take a few days longer than the eager regional sales reps emailing to know when they can finally deliver their pitch. The brochures from solid construction companies are quite amusing—I often feel like I’m at a “Chinese” or “Italian” restaurant: certain options appear on everyone’s menu, but each with a different number. “Sweet and sour duck” and “salami pizza” are everywhere. The computer-generated drawings of happy building families all look alike, and lo and behold, reverse image searches prove it: you find their “building proposals” under one of the well-known aerated concrete manufacturers’ offerings. Only sometimes not made from aerated concrete (or other monolithic materials), but built as “composite systems.” After all, there are vegan lasagnas, too.
Particularly embarrassing is that the same providers’ reference photo galleries on their websites show a wider range of customer houses, which would have been much better suited as building proposals. And typically, none admit to licensing designs from others, even though customers driving their Sharan / Galaxy / Alhambra probably couldn’t care less.
Apart from that, the market generally follows three approaches: sending information as a single brochure; a two-track approach with a picture brochure for everyone and a technical supplement as an insert; and a third variant combining pictures and technical details but split into separate brochures by product line. The majority opted for quick delivery of manageable information packs in all three cases. Many also offer a thicker brochure in addition, but the initial info packages already reveal fairly clearly whose offer you definitely want to avoid.
These small brochures have almost become part of the family, holding a fixed place on the coffee table. The latecomer arrived today, “long awaited, eagerly desired” (I hear Dalida singing), a hefty 2.7 kilograms (6 pounds) and 364 pages. The postman’s wheezing on the last step was quickly explained: what follows made me ponder whether this is failed advertising or simply reality satire. Because in those 2.7 kilograms (6 pounds) and 364 pages, there is absolutely n.o.t.h.i.n.g! !
Well, not literally nothing, although that would have been a nice idea—a thick notebook for scribbling your own ideas, with the last page saying “Here we are—ready to build for you!”
But here, the “nothing” is of a different kind: the book is, to put it mildly, content-wise very light. Despite its impressive thickness, only its prominent sponsor is thicker. Right at the beginning, it raves about the author being a satisfied homeowner, along with many others—now tens of thousands. The company was once in deep trouble, near closure, then a new CEO came, and since then it has been moving up and forward, far into the future—mentally at least, nearly in the 25th century. If desired, you can build an entire village with them, with other families too. Full of houses from the future, mentally ultra-modern. I would live in the rear building above my car-sharing electric vehicle charging station. Possibly above my own medical practice. I could sneak in discreetly via a separate staircase at the side delivery entrance. And there would even be room for grandma. Well, at least a small consolation.
Flipping through to the last chapter was not worth it, except for one significant achievement: the manufacturer actually managed over 2.7 kilograms (6 pounds) and 364 pages to avoid giving me any information on such mundane details as wall construction, even brief excerpts of performance specifications, or anything substantially meaningful. A dozen floor plans are scattered throughout, some with area measurements and even occasional exterior wall lengths.
I am overwhelmed—but not impressed, and certainly not informed.
Apparently, no one told the manufacturer’s marketing team about a great sales psychology effect: among several roughly equivalent products, the one that reaches the customer first gains the “home advantage.” Being last, especially when the race is already called off—the last in a six-day race doesn’t get unlimited time for the first lap—cannot be compensated for by paying the largest sum to the catalog printing house.
After this textbook example of a colossal failure, I now have to ask: how did your search for information go? How many (or how few) providers managed to give you at least an approximately shared definition of “useful, decision-supporting information,” and where did providers most miss the mark in giving you good reasons to check the mailbox with answered questions?
I didn’t rely solely on names familiar from past years but also included portals promising brochures from multiple providers at once. A colorful mix of solid and timber frame builders. Such a journey can be quite an experience. The highlight came today, but more on that later.
I have been keeping a sideways eye on the market all along, so I was aware that much from “back then” about “companies” (brands/names) and what was “typical” for them can be forgotten: recognizable names with “brand value” alone, like Bugatti or Grundig, have changed ownership so fundamentally that, apart from their reputation, nothing remains the same—at least among prefabricated home builders. But since the trend suite of Passive House / Energy Saving Ordinance / KfW funding has refreshed their model ranges, I finally had to take a broad “full blood count” of the market again.
Most providers manage to send out information brochures averaging about 20 pages within four to five business days. Just over a quarter of them lag behind, as their brochure mailing logistics take a few days longer than the eager regional sales reps emailing to know when they can finally deliver their pitch. The brochures from solid construction companies are quite amusing—I often feel like I’m at a “Chinese” or “Italian” restaurant: certain options appear on everyone’s menu, but each with a different number. “Sweet and sour duck” and “salami pizza” are everywhere. The computer-generated drawings of happy building families all look alike, and lo and behold, reverse image searches prove it: you find their “building proposals” under one of the well-known aerated concrete manufacturers’ offerings. Only sometimes not made from aerated concrete (or other monolithic materials), but built as “composite systems.” After all, there are vegan lasagnas, too.
Particularly embarrassing is that the same providers’ reference photo galleries on their websites show a wider range of customer houses, which would have been much better suited as building proposals. And typically, none admit to licensing designs from others, even though customers driving their Sharan / Galaxy / Alhambra probably couldn’t care less.
Apart from that, the market generally follows three approaches: sending information as a single brochure; a two-track approach with a picture brochure for everyone and a technical supplement as an insert; and a third variant combining pictures and technical details but split into separate brochures by product line. The majority opted for quick delivery of manageable information packs in all three cases. Many also offer a thicker brochure in addition, but the initial info packages already reveal fairly clearly whose offer you definitely want to avoid.
These small brochures have almost become part of the family, holding a fixed place on the coffee table. The latecomer arrived today, “long awaited, eagerly desired” (I hear Dalida singing), a hefty 2.7 kilograms (6 pounds) and 364 pages. The postman’s wheezing on the last step was quickly explained: what follows made me ponder whether this is failed advertising or simply reality satire. Because in those 2.7 kilograms (6 pounds) and 364 pages, there is absolutely n.o.t.h.i.n.g! !
Well, not literally nothing, although that would have been a nice idea—a thick notebook for scribbling your own ideas, with the last page saying “Here we are—ready to build for you!”
But here, the “nothing” is of a different kind: the book is, to put it mildly, content-wise very light. Despite its impressive thickness, only its prominent sponsor is thicker. Right at the beginning, it raves about the author being a satisfied homeowner, along with many others—now tens of thousands. The company was once in deep trouble, near closure, then a new CEO came, and since then it has been moving up and forward, far into the future—mentally at least, nearly in the 25th century. If desired, you can build an entire village with them, with other families too. Full of houses from the future, mentally ultra-modern. I would live in the rear building above my car-sharing electric vehicle charging station. Possibly above my own medical practice. I could sneak in discreetly via a separate staircase at the side delivery entrance. And there would even be room for grandma. Well, at least a small consolation.
Flipping through to the last chapter was not worth it, except for one significant achievement: the manufacturer actually managed over 2.7 kilograms (6 pounds) and 364 pages to avoid giving me any information on such mundane details as wall construction, even brief excerpts of performance specifications, or anything substantially meaningful. A dozen floor plans are scattered throughout, some with area measurements and even occasional exterior wall lengths.
I am overwhelmed—but not impressed, and certainly not informed.
Apparently, no one told the manufacturer’s marketing team about a great sales psychology effect: among several roughly equivalent products, the one that reaches the customer first gains the “home advantage.” Being last, especially when the race is already called off—the last in a six-day race doesn’t get unlimited time for the first lap—cannot be compensated for by paying the largest sum to the catalog printing house.
After this textbook example of a colossal failure, I now have to ask: how did your search for information go? How many (or how few) providers managed to give you at least an approximately shared definition of “useful, decision-supporting information,” and where did providers most miss the mark in giving you good reasons to check the mailbox with answered questions?
I am building with an architect and managing individual trades myself because I want transparency. I want to engage with the materials and understand exactly what I’m paying for. I want to pay a fair price for extras based on their true value, not an inflated cost for limited options. But this works both ways—I also want to be able to "opt out" of certain items if I choose, and fully benefit from the resulting savings. Whether this is cheaper overall is debatable, but it feels right to me. It suits me better.
However, I believe I am in the minority with this approach. The impression in this forum is skewed because buyers from developers usually purchase off-the-shelf and rarely participate in forums. If Amazon sold houses, they would become the market leader within six months.
However, I believe I am in the minority with this approach. The impression in this forum is skewed because buyers from developers usually purchase off-the-shelf and rarely participate in forums. If Amazon sold houses, they would become the market leader within six months.
Alex85 schrieb:
If Amazon sold houses, they would be industry leaders within six months.No, hehe: I can already picture people casually ordering houses to try out and sending them back for free just because they don’t like the tiles *LOL*
wpic schrieb:
You could simply find an architect and ask them all the really urgent questions,not in this case, because my focus was exactly on comparing off-the-shelf providers, meaning I only involved traditional builders insofar as they even had catalogs. I wasn’t concerned with the architect as the “third party” or with timber frame versus masonry; rather, I was interested in a material-independent cross-section of standard production model providers. Along with their products, the quality and usability of their information was also part of the evaluation.
wpic schrieb:
The high-end models from some prefabricated house suppliers, which are also architecturally and energy-wise interesting, are already in price ranges where working with an architect becomes attractive.I see it exactly the same way, and I never believed that a prefabricated house should stand out just by price, neither higher nor lower. The work of an architect has value and purpose, and therefore a price (whether billed separately or included in the overall package). It also depends heavily on the specific building project, so simply copying a set of plans for a standard house saves nothing. It still has to fit the plot, which is always an individual case.
And because I don’t see a fundamental difference—except for the construction time—I consider prefabricated house manufacturers as “general contractors like any others.” Many traditional builders also have “preferences.” One might insist on expanded clay aggregate, another on aerated concrete, a third on sand-lime brick; in my region pumice is still popular, and some use only a certain type of shuttering block. So I see a builder who says “I only build walls with my own sandwich composition featuring a structural timber core” as equivalent to one who technically could build with anything but prefers one material and rejects others. And that’s how I see it.
Sascha aus H schrieb:
Wall construction? Probably no one cares.exactly the opposite: reflecting my view (“just another contractor, just using a different building material category than the masonry colleagues”), wall construction—or even more so the quality and accessibility of information about it—is simply a key part of the service description.
By the way, wall construction was a driving factor behind the trend toward customized planning in prefab houses: due to Passive House standards / energy-saving regulations / KFW requirements, prefab manufacturers would have had to revise all their house models. There’s no advantage anymore in having led traditional masonry back in the ’90s regarding the ratio of insulation to wall thickness. That’s when the motto “go ahead with individual planning” was issued.
Sascha aus H schrieb:
Maybe KfW standards again, so you can get a supposedly cheaper loan, but how it is implemented? I think hardly anyone cares.Here I unfortunately fully agree with you.
Sascha aus H schrieb:
I believe those empty catalogues you criticized, @11ant, are exactly what most buyers are looking for if they don’t go directly to an architect.I never made a general criticism about catalogs being empty—because that wouldn’t apply to the majority. Introductory information is allowed to omit details, and most providers manage quite well to cover the essentials reasonably in a 20-page booklet—I don’t expect them to list every light switch or handle. I only found it embarrassing that the most late-to-deliver provider, in an unwieldy book whose weight exceeds all competitors’ info combined, tells basically nothing except blah blah.
With some traditional builders, I did criticize lack of content—but only on a subjective basis: compiling copied designs instead of showcasing a broader range of proposals from their own projects, which I find unnecessarily poor (putting copyright issues aside). But they did include statements on which materials their houses were made of.
.
Before this thread turns into a subdiscussion about “architect-designed house or prefab house,” I want to remind you of my original question. I am interested in:
- Did the providers whose info material you received mostly print just mere teasers, or were the materials suitable to prepare “intuitive decisions” from?
- Regardless of how you individually weigh your top ten facts: were they clearly laid out in the information, or rather hidden like Easter eggs?
- Did you get the impression you were supposed to compare houses like you would cars (or loans or insurance), or did the brochures only say “we’re proud of our photographer—but never ask what’s inside our sausage mix”?
The information I received was mostly of satisfactory quality. At minimum, all except the one with the particularly bulky book (the one from the large “medical villa” builder doesn’t even weigh half as much) dealt with houses of today for people of today with plots of today, instead of presenting me with an unusable philosophical essay about urban development of tomorrow that only a housing association could pull off based on the plot alone. That disappointed my expectations of an information package for a single-family home builder in 2017/2018 dramatically (and loudly).
https://www.instagram.com/11antgmxde/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/bauen-jetzt/
Sascha aus H11 Mar 2017 19:3911ant schrieb:
Exactly the opposite: from my perspective (“also a builder, just working with a different building material category than the masonry colleagues”), the wall structure (or even more so: the quality and accessibility of information about it) is simply a fundamental part of the scope of work. I agree that it belongs to the scope of work. My comment was about the fact that very few clients actually want to engage with the materials, so it doesn’t really matter whether they are listed in a catalog or not.
11ant schrieb:
- Did the providers whose informational materials you received mostly just print basic teasers, or were the details sufficient to make “informed gut decisions” from them? I can answer that with a clear yes; it was enough for us every time. We only used catalogs when looking for ideas for the floor plan. When it came to planning our construction project, I asked the companies to send me their detailed scope of work descriptions before scheduling an initial meeting.
A catalog is not the same as a detailed scope of work. That basically says it all.
A catalog is marketing material designed to attract potential customers, nothing more. If someone expects otherwise, they probably have never looked at a car catalog or similar. It’s about key figures—numbers, data, facts—presented at a consumer level, and that’s what matters. No one wants to compare the highly technical details of providers at the initial selection stage. Ultimately, those details are just one piece of the puzzle when deciding between company A or B. And @Sascha aus H is right: in the end, the wall construction itself isn’t the truly important factor. Company A builds one way, company B another. At the end of the day, it’s about a house that complies with energy saving regulations or KfW requirements or whatever applies.
Of course, I filter out anything I don’t like (for example, ETICS / external thermal insulation composite systems, or companies using Ytong blocks, or whatever my criteria are).
A catalog is marketing material designed to attract potential customers, nothing more. If someone expects otherwise, they probably have never looked at a car catalog or similar. It’s about key figures—numbers, data, facts—presented at a consumer level, and that’s what matters. No one wants to compare the highly technical details of providers at the initial selection stage. Ultimately, those details are just one piece of the puzzle when deciding between company A or B. And @Sascha aus H is right: in the end, the wall construction itself isn’t the truly important factor. Company A builds one way, company B another. At the end of the day, it’s about a house that complies with energy saving regulations or KfW requirements or whatever applies.
Of course, I filter out anything I don’t like (for example, ETICS / external thermal insulation composite systems, or companies using Ytong blocks, or whatever my criteria are).
I believe there is a suitable partner for everyone.
We are not interested in nice pictures but are looking for a balanced approach that allows us to make our own decisions without having to check every single detail.
Some friends of ours go with a certain builder (brother-in-law of a friend, they didn't even ask why we chose not to build with them. After all, he's family).
No model homes visited,
No consideration given to the floor plan, etc.,
No comparisons made,
Bill of quantities – what is that?
And you actually think about where you want your electrical outlets – do I have to do that???
We are not interested in nice pictures but are looking for a balanced approach that allows us to make our own decisions without having to check every single detail.
Some friends of ours go with a certain builder (brother-in-law of a friend, they didn't even ask why we chose not to build with them. After all, he's family).
No model homes visited,
No consideration given to the floor plan, etc.,
No comparisons made,
Bill of quantities – what is that?
And you actually think about where you want your electrical outlets – do I have to do that???
I have a positive memory of the catalogs from Scanhaus Marlow Marlow: prices included, scope of work description included, technical information provided, clearly organized, specifying what is standard and what is extra. Caution: the scope of work description from Scanhaus Marlow Marlow contains reductions—for example, no wall and floor coverings, meaning no tiles either. Very simple foundation slab.
Team Massivhaus-Büdelsdorf: prices included, scope of work description included, CD-ROM included with many floor plan variations beyond those printed in the catalog. Great transparency regarding additional costs. However, this is not a nationwide provider. Karsten
Team Massivhaus-Büdelsdorf: prices included, scope of work description included, CD-ROM included with many floor plan variations beyond those printed in the catalog. Great transparency regarding additional costs. However, this is not a nationwide provider. Karsten
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