Build new or wait for an affordable house to become available?

We were also faced with the decision to buy or build... unsurprisingly, the "buy" option was easily 200,000€ cheaper. What did we do... we build.

Important for us in choosing the plot was the walking distance (12 minutes) to the daycare and elementary school, as well as the accessibility of secondary schools within 10 minutes by bike. Babies also grow up (very quickly) and then other important needs arise, like having a grandma just around the corner.

: The house should cost 68k and was built in the 70s. I had calculated 300k for a new build. I thought new build prices don't fluctuate that much? Am I wrong?

With a house from the 70s, you have to do something to keep it in good shape for the next 50 years. Advantage: you can work through the trades step by step and thus spread the costs. I would count on at least 30k for external insulation, 30k for the roof, 10k for windows, 10k for new electrics, 15k for a new heating system, and another 10k for the interior finishing. Of course, it depends on how much you can do yourself.

Nine euros per square meter of land, that already sounds very severe, as every brick is worth nothing anymore once it "enters" the land – how about the average market price in the neighboring villages?

That a country doctor’s income might allow burning a part of it in depreciation doesn’t mean it should be used for that.

The house’s age itself suggests a comfortably doable gradual modernization, and I find the proposal of the retirement cottage extension for a shared apartment with the "Wahl-Uroma" quite likeable.

Zaba12 quotes Zaba12... but the link is for the thread starter, right?...

And in our area, many things are always talked down... deep East... population decline... etc.

But even here, you still have to pay 200,000 to 250,000 euros for a used house. At my parents' village, it's still over 100,000 euros... and these are really old shacks. With surface-mounted sockets, wood stove, and single-glazed wooden windows...

That was just emphasizing an opinion, nothing more

I don’t send links unsolicited :-p

That a country doctor's income may allow burning part of it in depreciation doesn't necessarily mean that one should use it for that.

If that is even the case at all. We are talking about a six-figure sum here. In my opinion, here people throw around extremely casually "hey, you can definitely spend that much on quality of life".

It should be noted that the security provided by a marketable asset disappears when the job, the ability to work, a divorce, or something else disrupts life plans... then there is an outstanding loan, what exactly stands against it?

And I find the proposal of the outhouse extension for a shared apartment with the "elected great-grandmother" sympathetic.

It is certainly unusual to the point of being bizarre, but why not?

In the long term, in my opinion, rural areas will become popular again and more people will seek to leave the city.

You can pretty much bet against that. How do people come up with such a thing? The majority of people want to go where the jobs are, there are fewer children, and the few people who think otherwise won’t manage to form a small town somewhere in the middle of nowhere.

I also don't see any bank that would even finance something like that. Grandma will have to pay cash. I also don't quite understand how a single grandmother can compensate for the obviously completely missing infrastructure. With the prices for land, it must really be the middle of nowhere where absolutely no one wants to go; the land is practically being given away.