Buy now or wait a little longer?

Thank you very much for all your suggestions.

We will see how much budget is left and what we can imagine building then. I liked the idea of first searching for a plot/paying off the parents and then building the house with the equity of the plot, and that is how we will probably proceed for now. This way, we also have enough time to consider what requirements we want to set for the house and what would be nice to have.

Let's see how much budget is left [...] and what would be nice to have.

Left after what: after the opening of the men's boutique in Wuppertal? Discipline regarding the length of the nice-to-have list is not harmful even without a lottery win.

A 125m² house does not offer more space than a 110, 115m² rental apartment in a multi-family house. Why? In the house, you have the utility room (HAR) for the technical equipment, which is in the cellar in the MFH. And you have the "staircase" and 2 corridors. That takes up significantly more space than when everything is on one floor...

If you want to live centrally, an [Eigentumswohnung] might be an alternative?

Single-family houses at affordable prices have never been something for the city center, not even 100 years ago.

Hello PankowPlant,

We also have three children now aged 5, 4, and 2.
We moved with 2 children from a three-room apartment and bought a 160 m2 MRH built in 2007 with 7 rooms (attic and basement are finished). We live in the Hamburg metropolitan area and had to move further away from Hamburg for our house.
We had the third child after the move.
An MRH is not exactly "representative." But compared to the new builds among acquaintances, none (at least in our sociodemographic group) has as many rooms or square meters sensibly divided for a family with small children!
An MRH and also a DHH have glaring disadvantages. But it is definitely better than renting. Here in the forum, I was advised to get an "intermediate house" before the purchase, and rightly so!
Our income situation has since improved so much that, with today's knowledge, a detached single-family house would have been possible. When the children are older and the requirements for a house change completely, we have a good basis to buy/build something else again.

Good luck to you, let us know how it goes!

Here in the forum, I was also advised to get an "intermediate house" before buying, and completely rightly so! Our income situation has since improved to the point that, with today’s knowledge, a detached single-family house would have been possible too.

The "intermediate house" I recommend (Yvonne prefers to call it a "starter property") is ultimately about the possibility that a detached single-family house might be feasible earlier than expected. In metropolitan areas, a semi-detached house is often the "the alternatives are only waiting or nothing" option simply because, even with higher income, "four-sided minimum distance plots" simply do not exist. Primarily, the intermediate house in the sense of my recommendation is about two things, namely: 1. rather than taking no step, better to take a small one if the big one is not yet affordable. School-age children grow quickly and are accordingly intolerant of the seemingly innocent word "time horizon." Due to many neighbors in comparable family situations, the children usually find good connections to peers of the same age in most semi-detached housing projects. And 2. to acclimate to the residential form of a "single-family home" (in this respect, a rented house also does good service). The main point of my advice is therefore, as you yourself describe ...

When the children are older and the requirements for a house completely change, we have a good basis to buy/build something else.

... to follow the residential needs of the young family and especially their children: getting out of the fear of rent increases and possibly also out of the situation of being a kind of "alien" young family in an otherwise "adult only" (or even explicitly "childless retirees") residential area. Children also want privacy from their siblings; for that, brick and parquet as "attractive features" rank lowest with them. And what they really don’t like is "waiting until they’re eleven," because that feels unimaginably long to seven-year-olds.

Or perhaps a townhouse or condominium from the developer. That way you have a bit more control.
Take a look at Pankower Hofgarten, but I don't know if anything is still available there.

I had mentioned an ongoing project with apparently still available townhouses in Heinersdorf at an affordable price, but there was no response to that, so I suspect there is no interest. It must probably be a detached single-family house.