Construction costs are currently skyrocketing

We live in the city and have over 2km to the nearest supermarket. All the villages here have no supermarket, no pharmacy, no bakery, no school. Fascinating what seems to be infrastructure elsewhere.

In this situation, one should not overestimate the equivalent value of the available building land. At the stated price for existing properties, the sqm is hardly worth more than 50-70€. You will have difficulty financing a new build at the current price level there unless you have a lot of equity. Regional banks are your friend.

We will see then. In the current new development area, a total of 11 new builds have been completed and are still being built. The sqm price was 80€. Nobody had problems with financing that, and financially 95% of them are less well off than we are AND they also had to buy the building land beforehand. I’m a bit less worried about that for now, but nothing concrete is planned for us yet either.

We live in the city and are over 2km away from the nearest supermarket. All the villages here have no supermarket, no pharmacy, no bakery, no school. Fascinating what seems to be infrastructure elsewhere.

Such villages certainly exist in the surrounding area as well. That really is the middle of nowhere, and I wouldn't want to live there either. But a village is not just a village, and you can't necessarily judge rural infrastructure by the population size.

When I read through this thread, I sometimes doubt whether I am really a village child.

It feels like everyone here thinks that a village necessarily has more cattle than inhabitants and is isolated from any civilization.

Not necessarily that, but as someone who grew up in a village (150 households) in a municipality of 8,000 inhabitants, I always find it strange when people say they are "moving to the village" and this village has 4,000 inhabitants, its own elementary school, and an Aldi. That is then a small town and no longer a village.

But I have to say that we hit pretty much the middle of nowhere exactly. But whether 5 km or 10 km also doesn't matter. If you sit in the car, you just drive. On country roads it goes quickly, so kilometers are much less a measure than whether the city.

Since there is no fixed definition for the term "village" regarding size and available infrastructure, I think everyone has had their own experiences with the "village." For example, I grew up in a village in Münsterland. About 40 years ago, around 1500 inhabitants. At that time, there was a gas station with an integrated car repair shop, a supermarket, a butcher, a corner shop, a stationery store, a hardware store, a hairdresser, a post office branch, 2 village pubs, and a small hotel with a restaurant. All family businesses run by established villagers. Now, for many years, none of these exist anymore: the supermarket, the butcher, the corner shop, the stationery store, the hardware store, the hairdresser, the post office branch, and the two village pubs. (One of the pubs and the post office branch were even in family ownership for decades, but no one in our family wanted to continue running the business either.) Meanwhile, there are now over 2000 inhabitants. After many years without its own supermarket, there has recently been a village shop run by the villagers themselves. So, the "village" had significantly more infrastructure back then than today. There has also been a primary school and a kindergarten there for as long as I can remember. During my father's childhood, there was already something like a secondary school there. However, it was still an old brick building in the farming area a little outside the village. There were grades 1 to 8, and after the 8th grade, my father had something like a Hauptschulabschluss today. At 13, he then started his apprenticeship. Today, we live in a municipality with about 7000 inhabitants in the Rhineland. Here, there is almost all infrastructure, except for a gas station. The nearest one is only in the neighboring town, 7 km away. That is why I always find it difficult when people write about a "village" here, as everyone understands a village differently.

We now live in the largest community of a total of 13 "villages." In total, slightly over 5,000 inhabitants all together. The surrounding villages have virtually no infrastructure but are at most ten kilometers away. Here we have doctors, hardware stores, gas stations, bakeries (real ones), butchers, two discount stores, two grocery stores, clothing shops, etc. pp., and a train station with connections to the next larger cities. If you ask me, I would say we live rurally but not in a village. To me, a village has at most a farm and a baker. Nothing else.