Additional costs for a prefabricated house

Hello dear forum community,

I am brand new here and wanted to ask (read up) how it went or goes for you with building a prefab house?

I am just about to despair. I am building a 143 sqm house with Bien-Zenker (or rather the somewhat cheaper variant with the subsidiary Living Haus).

I am already quite far along with the planning but the prices they charge for features (well, that actually aren’t really features) are astronomical.

A small excerpt to get a feel for whether this is rip-off and nonsense or if it’s real.

I am planning about 12 windows in my house (triple-glazed, KFW 55 standard). Since I would like anthracite-colored windows, the builder wants an upgrade surcharge of a whopping €3,500, which is about €300 per window. According to research and conversations with window suppliers, they would normally charge about €50-100 extra. Then I would also like reed contacts (smart home) in the windows, these aren’t really expensive, I would even accept an additional charge of about €50 per window sash. But since apparently not a single supplier from the builder (I think 4-5 are listed with them) offers a reed contact, the builder himself would install a reed contact but wants a whopping €150 per window sash for it. Isn’t that extortion? If I add these two "extras," I come to an additional cost of about €450 per window.

Have you had similar experiences?

What would you advise me?

Thank you for any tip.

Regards

My experience with "Büdenbender" is that the surcharges were passed on fairly. They generally corresponded to market prices, for example the reed contacts you mentioned, we got for 500 euros for 11 windows.

These prices are not only available with a prefabricated house.

However, there is a difference between building with an expensive or a cheap home builder: what might be included with the more expensive one, you pay for as an extra with the cheaper one.

The smaller siblings of big companies offer cheaper prices for a reason.

I don't know Living Haus, but maybe you are trying to turn a Duster into a Tiguan?

Regards, Yvonne

As far as I know, Living Haus is also just a model from Bien-Zenker. It is usually only affordable or reasonably priced if you take the house from the catalog without major changes. In the end, we ended up with an architect who planned individually and appropriately with us.

Thank you very much for the quick responses


Yes, I thought so too, I could live with this surcharge without any problem. But it is really poor that there is no supplier among the selection who can offer something like that.


I already thought that extras cost extra money. But just because I want a different color for the windows doesn’t mean I’m turning a Duster into a Tiguan just because I want a different color. It just annoys me that they charge a surcharge of almost 300%.


Apart from a few changes we made, it is almost like in the catalog, or actually even less, since a bay window would exceed the budget and we didn’t want that either.

I am experiencing something similar currently with the front door. The program only offers either plastic or wood. An aluminum door is not even an option. With regard to smart home with an electric lock, a plastic door is not recommended.

It is what it is. They make the house cheap and make up for it with the extras. You can only beat them by foregoing extras and retrofitting them yourself later. Karsten