ᐅ Own house with a large garden – which option is the best?

Hello everyone,

I just joined because my partner and I are currently working a lot on our future plans. This also includes owning a home.

To avoid making this too long for you, I’ll try to summarize our situation in bullet points.

Current situation:

Place of residence: a quiet small town in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern with about 30,000 inhabitants

Living situation: Moved into an 85m² (915 sq ft) apartment here in the middle of last year (690 € rent including utilities), previously lived in a 50m² (540 sq ft) apartment

He (30) works in IT and I (28) work part-time in finance. We are not married, have no children (and no plans for children). Both of us have a degree and are employed.

Other information: We take care of a small allotment garden, share a car, and have two rabbits J

That’s a bit about us. Recently, the desire for our own house has become more and more important.

Why build?
Our main wish is for a large garden where we can do whatever we want. A bigger living space is not that important; we are quite comfortable with limited space.

At the moment, we have three options under serious consideration:

1. Grandparents’ house
My partner’s grandparents own a fairly large semi-detached house here in town. The house itself is very nice, but a lot of work would be needed: clearing out, rewiring, probably new heating as well. My partner’s mother has already said she is not interested in the inheritance. When we asked the grandparents, who are quite frugal, about their plans for the house, they said: “I don’t want the house to stay in the family. I want to get as much money as possible for it.” So that basically ended the topic for us. Of course, we could formally express interest, but we don’t want to cause any family disputes over money…

2. Traditional prefab house
If we build ourselves, we would go for a small bungalow between 60 and 80m² (645–860 sq ft). Why? I only want to build once in my life and therefore want to avoid stairs that we might not be able to manage later. Also, we think a smaller house is cheaper to maintain, could be easier to sell later due to demographic trends (though selling is not planned, you never know), and of course cheaper to build in the first place.

3. Modular house
There are cheaper and more expensive models. What appeals to us here is how very fast construction is, with almost no waste, and the concept sounds generally exciting. Unfortunately, there are hardly any user experiences available…

Since we haven’t saved much money so far, we are currently figuring out how much we need to save and whether it is still worthwhile at all. We have already heard from some people that we should have started saving a long time ago. But our motivation to save is currently quite high, and we do have perseverance J

I would be interested in hearing your views on this:

Which of the options do you think is best?

How about the financial side? How much money should we have set aside?

So far, we estimate the cost for land and house together to be around 100,000–120,000 € (approx. 109,000–131,000 USD). We have no idea yet what additional building-related costs might come up. Can you give an approximate percentage of what extra costs could be added depending on the option?

Many thanks to everyone

Yours, Ringelblume

PS: It turned out to be quite a long text after all... Sorry about that...

Hello, even if the plot probably costs a fortune where you are, I think 100k–120k is quite ambitious.

How large is the house supposed to be?

How firm is the childless preference?

HilfeHilfe schrieb:
Hello, even though the plot probably costs a fortune where you are, I think 100k–120k is an ambitious budget.

How large is the house supposed to be?

How firm is the wish to have no children?

Hello,

we had planned a bungalow with 60–80m² (645–860 sq ft) of living space.

The wish to remain child-free is quite firm 🙂

Best regards
Ringelblume

Now an 85 m² (915 sq ft) apartment plus heating system located somewhere within the multi-family building, plus presumably a basement storage room and possibly a laundry/drying room.

A 60 to 80 m² (645 to 860 sq ft) bungalow usually won’t be enough. Because the technical equipment also needs to be accommodated there. You should also consider everything you store in a garden shed in a community garden … all of that should be properly housed on your own property as well.

And 100,000 to 120,000 euros … even for a small bungalow, I find that unrealistic. If you want it to be affordable, you should roughly calculate around 1600 euros per m² (15 sq ft) for the house, plus the land. That might possibly work out. However, I think it will more likely be a 100 m² (1,075 sq ft) bungalow. Just take a look at floor plans from house builders online. That’s how you start to get a realistic sense of the size.

kbt09 schrieb:
Now an 85 m² (915 sq ft) apartment plus heating system located somewhere within the multi-family building, plus probably a basement storage room and possibly a laundry/drying room.

A 60 to 80 m² (645 to 860 sq ft) bungalow usually isn’t enough for that. Because the technical equipment also has to be accommodated there. You also need to think about everything stored in the allotment garden shed … all of that should also have a proper place on your own property.

The heating system is in the basement, that’s true. We have a basement, but we don’t use it because it’s quite damp. There is no laundry or drying room. The washing machine and dryer are located in the bathroom. We only moved into the larger apartment because the layout of the old apartment was difficult. We have a relatively large rabbit enclosure inside the apartment, and after my partner moved in with me, space became a bit tight. In a detached house with a garden, the animals would be outside and no longer inside the apartment. By the way, in the new apartment, we have one room that we hardly use at all. There is just a shelf and my yoga mat in there 😉 And there isn’t much in the allotment garden that we would want to take with us. Apart from garden tools, of course, but for those, you’d need a separate shed anyway.

kbt09 schrieb:
And 100 to 120k … even with a small bungalow, I consider that unrealistic. If you want it to be affordable, assume roughly 1600 €/m² (about $150 per sq ft) for the house plus the land. That might possibly work out. Although I think it will probably be a 100 m² (1,075 sq ft) bungalow. Just have a look at floor plans from home builders online. That will slowly give you a feel for realistic sizes.

We have already looked at floor plans. According to what we like, the cost range with prefabricated house providers is between 90 and 110k. However, 1600 €/m² (about $150 per sq ft) is definitely a useful guideline!

Yes, there are additional costs with a prefab house provider. There are quite a few extra expenses to consider. This https://www.hausbau-forum.de/threads/welche-infos-um-finanzierung-angebot-bewerten-zu-koennen.18200/ might be helpful.

In general, finances as well as overviews of everything that needs to be taken into account regarding construction costs.