ᐅ Current Situation of the Construction Industry in the Rhine-Main Region

Hello everyone,

Now that we have a final financing commitment and will have our plot officially certified on Tuesday, I am a bit uncertain about some statements from my architect. He mentioned that due to the current strong construction boom, prices for new builds are rising sharply, and it is becoming difficult to find contractors and tradespeople. Therefore, we should expect significantly higher costs and a longer construction period of up to 1.5 years. Currently, tenders for individual trades are hardly being processed, and the few available contractors in the market are mostly interested in multi-family housing projects because of the effort involved.

Is there anyone here from FFM who is currently building with an independent architect?

Thanks for your responses

Our general contractor here in the Gießen area has a lead time of 15 months before they can even start. They still find good tradespeople. Fingerhaus seems to have the capacity as well. Those who are building with architects usually start earlier, but they experience significant downtime. It takes just as long to complete the construction.

Generally, you can expect about 2 years from contract signing to moving in.

If you want to build reasonably affordably and relatively quickly, hire a general contractor or choose a prefabricated house. Skip the architect. No craftsman currently wants to take on architect-designed houses. Construction meetings, thousands of emails, special requests, long payment processes, complex contract procedures (German construction contract procedures known as VOB), they simply don’t want to deal with all that right now. Karsten

Build a prefabricated house and you will save a lot on architect’s fees.
The cost-effectiveness of the thermal insulation compared to solid construction is unbeatable.

And what about agreeing on the completion deadline? An architect has to adhere to that just like a general contractor, right?

@Nordlys Architects also have "their craftsmen," companies they work with regularly. You just need to check with them in time. If they get along well, I don't see any problem with it working out. And as I said, there is also a completion deadline in the architect’s contract.

He already has a financing commitment based on a construction description, cost breakdown, house plans, etc.

So how is he supposed to approach a general contractor and say that he wants a prefabricated house from program XYZ?

@niri09 Which completion deadline are you referring to?