Construction costs are currently skyrocketing

Yep, all larger companies now have home office company agreements or it is stipulated in the collective agreement.

Well, some also try to prevent HO by all means or come up with some operational reasons why HO is not possible. My husband has to fight for every day. They would rather give him some tasks that he can only do at the office, which do not belong to his area of responsibility, in order to give him fewer HO days.

Google "bi medien Materialmangel". A nice report about costs and availability. And anyone who is currently building or planning it can go puke afterwards. Even though the report does not go into great detail.

We already briefly discussed this on page 371 of this thread :) The high abandonment rate and "on hold" rate – if they are correct – could actually become a great advantage for the risk-takers who continue. The building material dealers and suppliers are currently trying to order as much as possible to meet the high demand. If this demand suddenly drops and an oversupply results, that would be the jackpot. However, I don't fully believe that yet, as the "waiting list" is likely extremely long.

My husband has to fight for every day. They’d rather pile on him some tasks that he can only do at the company, which don’t even belong to his area of responsibility, in order to give him fewer work-from-home days.

They keep doing this until he looks for a new job and his successor makes work-from-home a condition upon hiring ;-)

Returning from working from home leads to an outright revolt in some companies – a very large German bank wanted to offer 40% work from home, in exceptional cases 60%. Naturally, everyone wanted to be the exception. The result now is that 60% is the standard.

They will do that until he looks for a new job and his successor makes HO a condition for hiring ;-)

He certainly won’t be doing that anymore now, a good year before the end of his working life It’s just annoying because it’s unnecessary.

Currently, I see more and more bigger old buildings coming onto the market here with 200 m2 and upwards, plots with 1000 m2 and more. Somewhere from the 60s/70s where a new oil heating system was installed in the 90s, and a window was replaced...

Price starting from 350k upwards plus the huge sums you have to invest for upgrading/renovation and your own remodeling wishes.

It’s still cheap in comparison. Here, houses with considerably less living space and similar condition were offered for just under 400k 1.5 years ago. But they all sold really quickly. I think with rising interest rates and the upcoming renovation requirements, the demand for such houses will decrease. Once you start there, you quickly end up with a full renovation to EH70, and that’s the really expensive part.