Buying land + building a house near Frankfurt realistic?

Hello everyone,

My wife and I have the opportunity to purchase a plot of land about 20 km away from Frankfurt in a town with S-Bahn connection, in the second row (approx. 500 m²). Since we are both "newcomers" and work full-time, we have no help with construction or anything else, so a major renovation is out of the question.

Our plan is as follows:

Purchase of the plot at the beginning of 2020 - costs approx. 290,000 EUR including incidental purchase costs.
1-3 years for house planning and commissioning. We don't need luxury; we would be satisfied with a normal 5-room house with a maximum of 140 m² without a basement. A carport/garage is enough for us. Only a nice bathroom and underfloor heating would be great. But with the currently high construction costs, I really don’t know what a single-family house costs turnkey. 350,000 EUR sounds okay though.

We have equity of about 85,000 EUR together. Together we have relatively crisis-proof jobs with a net income of 7,500 EUR per month.
We currently pay about 1,500 EUR in rent including additional costs and would be willing to pay a maximum of 2,000 EUR including additional costs.

We have no debts or other major monthly burdens. Currently, we each save about 1,000 EUR.

Of course, we want to have children someday.

I find it incredibly difficult to get a plot at all in the metropolitan region, let alone for a somewhat reasonable price, so I always feel like I'm being taken for a ride... If it goes wrong, I could still sell the plot for around break-even with a blue eye....

Is this realistic in your eyes?

Thanks for your advice!!!!

Difficult. You will probably need to take out about 200TEUR for the land. That’s already about 650€ per month. The house would have to be fully financed and would probably be around 300TEUR + additional costs + extras. 400TEUR all together would be realistic and doable. So you need a total of 600k from the bank and that’s about 2k repayment + additional costs + reserves. 2750-3000 would then be gone for the house. In my opinion, your net income is still sufficient for that, but you have to settle it with yourself. There are still over 4000EUR available monthly. And the repayment is fixed for 20+ years + your salaries will probably increase. On the other hand, rents will probably continue to rise. Personally, I haven’t seen anyone fail at this so far.

How are the salaries distributed? To estimate a possible salary decrease due to part-time work when children are present

That's true. If the property works out, we want to step on the brakes financially for the next 2-3 years (no 4 vacations ...) and save most of the money. That way, we could save another 60,000 EUR.

How are the salaries distributed? To estimate a possible salary decrease due to part-time work when children are present

My wife even earns a bit more than I do, but basically almost the same amount. With children, we would possibly both reduce to 80% at first.

My wife even earns a bit more than I do, but basically almost the same amount. With children, we might both initially reduce to 80%.

2x 80% is a great split in my opinion. We have something similar. That means about 6k monthly. With a 2k rate, that should still work. However, I have the feeling that you need to rethink your consumption habits a bit. 2k savings with 7.5k income is not a top figure. But 4 vacations with a child are no longer really interesting anyway. Are there still 13th salaries or bonuses? Or are they included in the 7.5k?