Behavior/Consequences towards Construction Company

You. Moreover, oral side agreements ("all the talk around it") can very well be legally effective, especially since we have not established a written form requirement.

The problem with oral agreements is proving them. If you now also have a written contract that claims exactly the opposite (finished in December), that does not necessarily help your position either.

Yes, communication often fails. Small construction companies often do not have a GeZi pool, the office staff cannot answer questions about the construction, much is done via mobile phone because very few houses are built at a desk. However, the site manager should be reachable during business hours.

this was signed and also submitted to the bank as such. The bank also followed the construction schedule.

Does the bank have anything to do with the construction schedule? You only pay when the partial demand (I have actually forgotten the technical term now) comes in writing and not what the schedule indicates. For example, we didn’t have a construction schedule at all, precisely for this reason, because clients can get quite nervous and the general contractor couldn’t commit.

Why should I voluntarily sign the contract with the clause if then I have no place to stay for 4 months?

I did not understand this point: had you already terminated the apartment "back then"? That would have been quite early, right? Over a year in advance?

has anyone here in the forum addressed this question so far?

Yes! It was pointed out that it is difficult to find craftsmen.
I add the fact that the electricity for the drying devices will probably no longer be paid for by the general contractor, which they had offered.

It is understandable that the general contractor is patching holes. Very likely he has taken on one more project than the capacities allow.

Everything is already bad in your situation. However, apparently from the start a big bundle of naivety was involved. The general contractor has December on the schedule.
You are not the only ones, not the first or the last. Freight forwarders have specialized in storage and holiday apartments offer special prices for a quarter’s rent.

Thank you for your reply!

I don’t quite see it the way you do. Especially since verbal side agreements ("all the fuss around it") can indeed be legally effective, especially since we did not establish a written form requirement. Why should I voluntarily sign the contract with the clause if then I have nowhere to stay for 4 months? At the signing, it was said that it MUST be finished by summer at the latest. That was agreed. Along with the signed construction plan.

Tomorrow we will contact a lawyer and have a nice letter drawn up. Maybe that will have an effect.

You can save yourselves the trip to the lawyer and the money. You have no legal recourse against the general contractor. A contract is a contract. And it states the completion date as 31.12.2022. Nothing else matters. The lawyer charges based on the value in dispute. For you, that will likely be the entire contract value and quite a significant amount. I know what I’m talking about, as my legal disputes have already cost a lot of money.

The agreed and signed construction schedule is from May this year, so it is worth something, right?! Especially since there are no worst-case scenarios (like lockdowns), the completion should have been by the end of 2022 according to the contract.

We signed under these conditions that it must be completed this summer (there is also an email about this, which once again went unanswered). We are not moving out for fun - but because the contract ends.

It’s almost misleading.

Hello,

sorry to have to say it so harshly. But December is still 5 months away. You signed it that way and should have planned accordingly. The company has plenty of stories to explain why they are not finished earlier (material shortages, craftsmen, etc).

You can save yourself a lawyer.

I don’t quite see it the way you do. Especially since oral side agreements (“all the talk around it”) can very well be legally effective, especially since we haven’t established a written form requirement. Why should I voluntarily sign the contract with the clause if then I have no place to stay for 4 months? When signing we said, it MUST be finished by summer at the latest. That was agreed upon. Along with the signed construction plan.

Oral side agreements should certainly be sufficient when it comes to things like changing the door hinge or other rather unproblematic matters. For contractual things, in my opinion, it is simply very very difficult to prove these side agreements if the general contractor suddenly can’t remember them or denies them. I also want to point out, what do you gain from it? A lawsuit won’t proceed faster, and finding substitute craftsmen to complete the unfinished work of the predecessor will probably also be very difficult!

We also received a construction schedule, but this was never a binding handover agreement. We had about one month delay according to the construction schedule overall, but a point landing, as was agreed in the contract.

As much as it pains me, I see it like the other participants, that you will have a very hard time legally enforcing anything.

I would now rather try to build pressure. I’m normally not the type to exploit circumstances for something, but I would still bring into play that these circumstances affect you emotionally and accordingly your pregnancy etc. Sometimes you get further with the waterworks than with factual arguments.

I’m experiencing it right now with our garden and landscaping contractor.. Our construction site has now been stopped for a week because another client is crying.. His wife wouldn’t move in earlier until everything was finished. And now all of them are over there and will only come back to us in the middle of the week..

For the money a lawyer costs, I would quickly get a construction supervisor/expert. I think you would benefit more from that.