ᐅ Questions About Building a House – Tips from Experienced Homeowners

Hello everyone,

I’m new to the forum and hoping for some helpful tips. We are currently planning a single-family house and have already purchased the plot. At the moment, we have several offers from prefabricated house suppliers as well as one from a solid construction company (in this case, the prices don’t differ much). The crucial question is that the listed price usually isn’t the final price.

So my question is: how much additional cost can one expect for the house alone? Our current budget looks like this: house 230,000 € (approximately $250,000), land 70,000 € (fully serviced), incidental building costs 30,000 € — is this calculation sufficient?

Single-family house, 150 m² (1,615 sq ft), 1.5 stories with knee walls 1.80 m (5 ft 11 in), footprint 9 x 10 m (29.5 x 32.8 ft) — does this even make sense on a plot measuring 22 x 22 m (72 x 72 ft)? We want to build without a basement, so we need storage space. Ground floor: living room, dining room, kitchen, utility room, guest room, WC/shower. Upper floor: 2-bedroom layout, children’s room, master bedroom, bathroom with quarter-turn staircase (any alternative ideas here?). How large should a utility room be? The system will be gas with a heat water tank, ventilation system, and solar heating support... (I’ve read the various opinions on heating systems; for us, it’s also a financial decision. Please no fundamental debates on this topic). The subsidies for heat pumps are really overrated; we are building in Bavaria, where there is the “10,000 houses program,” which was already scaled back a week after the new kfW subsidies came into effect because of overlapping programs... (facepalm)

What else needs to be considered already in the planning phase, aside from surveyors, soil reports, and house connections?
I would appreciate some suggestions on what to think about or what is often overlooked early on but still comes up later.

Thanks in advance. Charly

Please read this thread and apply what you learn. It will make it easier to answer many of your questions, especially regarding the floor plan—without a floor plan, nothing can be said, particularly about the staircase.

CharlyC42 schrieb:
Cost estimate looks like this: house 230,000 €, land 70,000 € (fully serviced), additional construction costs 30,000 € – is this calculation sufficient?

That's tight. You should actually budget around 1,600 per square meter (approximately 150 per square foot).
What about the extra purchase costs for the land?
The additional construction costs are also tight but could be accurate. It’s better to add another 10,000 € as a buffer.

What about a garage? What about external facilities or landscaping?

The land size might be okay, but it really depends on your garden expectations and how the building plot is laid out.

With a 9m (30 ft) by 10m (33 ft) building, you won’t reach 150m² (1,615 ft²) unless you exclude walls from the calculation.

It actually has a knee wall of 1.80 meters (5 feet 11 inches). That means 180 square meters (1,938 square feet) of walls.

Well, I can tell you that we have a 10x10 meter (33x33 feet) house with a knee wall height of 2.30 meters (7.5 feet), and our total area is around 154 m² (1,658 ft²). However, there are different methods for calculating floor areas.