Building description and soil report / geotechnical report

Hello everyone,

I am very pleased to have found a forum about this very important topic area. I am new here and have already read through some threads and learned interesting things. Unfortunately, I did not find anything concrete regarding my current case, so I am opening a new topic.

My wife and I want to buy a semi-detached house (including the plot) "turnkey" from the developer. We already have good experience with buying an apartment in this regard, but with a complete house there is of course much more involved. The setup is as follows: the developer is the company carrying out the masonry work. However, we are in contact with a real estate agent who handles all customer communication (and then arranges the various trades for special features).

In principle, we are very satisfied with the offer. What we are a bit concerned about is the issue of the soil survey. The building description states that this is included in the services, but only if necessary. I then asked the real estate agent whether one had been or would be carried out. She said that this was not necessary because a soil survey was conducted by the municipality during the development of the new building area and the soil is good. Of course, I researched and found that this cannot be generalized and a property-specific survey should be carried out. Now my question is, should I insist hard on this survey? What could happen in the worst case? The developer has to sell me a "finished" house; doesn’t that mean if the soil causes problems, he will notice this during the construction phase and it might then become more expensive for him?

I am open and grateful for further tips on what must be mandatorily included in such a building description :)

Do you also take care of production at VW? You are not the builder, the BT is. You are the buyer of a finished property. An expert report, if the municipality has one, is completely sufficient for the developer. Why should he make another one? And he sees during construction what is going on. K.

The developer must sell me a "finished" house,

Is it a developer? Then you are buying a piece of the house from the developer, who is the client. Everything around how they build, you have little opportunity to intervene.

Or is it a general contractor or general contractor with overall responsibility? Then you are the client yourself and can expand the construction service description on your side by agreement.
If it says if necessary, then they are not required. But you are of course right: it is better. However, then it would be a service to be provided by you. On your side.

Here it must first be precisely examined what kind of contract is concluded. We have commissioned you according to the contract to build the house on a plot of land which you purchase, then you are responsible for ensuring that it is also buildable. You should make sure that no clause states that the builder, if desired, must provide a soil report. This means, conversely, that if you do not provide one, you are responsible if something is not right. The construction company will refer back to this (e.g. cracks in the walls, the foundation slab, ...). Such a report from an expert chosen by YOU costs only a fraction of the house price compared to the trouble saved. So, check exactly what the contracts look like. The construction service specification is also part of the contract in such cases.

1) For a genuine property developer: It is their business. 2) For general contractor construction: Clarify which report the municipality provides. One for the entire construction area, or one for each parcel? In this case, it was the latter, so an additional separate one here would have been a waste of money. 3) Why the obsession with reports at all? In the past, everything was built without them, even cathedrals. Because the BU increasingly protects itself against litigious people, because the customer also wants fixed prices or almost fixed prices for civil engineering, and to calculate those, the report is needed. Because building without a report means finding out what is going on during civil engineering to then react. K.

Thank you very much for your answers. I will clarify the exact relationship again. As it looks, we are "only" buyers of a finished property and BT would have to be the BH at the same time.