Amount of advance payments

The final installment would be far too low for me. Based on all the experience I have gathered privately and professionally in construction, I would agree to no less than a 10% final installment. If, at acceptance, a few significant or many small defects should be found, 4% is too little.

Nobody does that. Karsten

Nobody does that. Karsten

I cannot confirm that, on the contrary. We even negotiated down to 16%, all local providers went down to 10%.

Ok. I wouldn't have thought that. Karsten

If (!) the general contractor goes bankrupt, for example, after installing the windows, only 27% remain to complete the entire interior construction?!
But be that as it may, in the end it is a matter of trust.

Yes, that's what I wrote, the contractor is covered during the entire period. Without a completion guarantee (which you don’t get for free), there remains a risk for the client – this risk lies entirely with them for the respective section already started.

But reading between the lines, the negotiation result is actually already there: namely to work through the plan unchanged from item 2 to item 8, and to shift the 5 percentage points from item 1 to item 9.

By the way, complaints about defects are not to be shifted along with this: that only applies in the case of a developer house, where you are not allowed to roam the construction site before handover of the keys. A payment plan like this usually involves partial acceptance of the trades completed up to that point, and the claiming of already identifiable need for rework. In this respect, the four percentage points for the "front door" no longer need to secure a retention for a too low-built basement.

Thank you very much for the interesting answers. That also corresponds more to my not so good gut feeling. I would like to add something - what gives me even more cause for concern. The contract states: "Die Bauzeit (von Baubeginn bis Bezugsfertigkeit) beträgt 10 Monate, vorbehaltlich witterungsbedingter Ausfalltage. Der v. g. Preis gilt als verbindlicher Festpreis für die gesamte Bauzeit, längstens doch für 18 Monate nach Vertragsabschluss. Beträgt die Bauzeit aus vom AN nicht zu vertretenen Umständen mehr als 18 Monate, gerechnet ab Vertragsabschluss, so kann der AN vom AG eine angemessene Entschädigung für die eingetretenen und nachgewiesenen Kostensteigerungen gemäß §642 Baugesetzbuch verlangen." A fixed completion date is not specified.