Construction costs for building a multi-family house (5 units) in Bielefeld

Hello everyone,
we are planning to purchase a plot of land to build a multi-family house there. To get a sense of the scale of such a project, we are dealing with the question of total costs. The land costs are, of course, known.

Do you perhaps have a tip on how or where I can roughly calculate such a project? Can I only have this "planned" and calculated by an architect? Are there reliable and, above all, up-to-date calculators/tools on the internet?

We are grateful for any advice and wish you a nice weekend.

Best regards
Dennis

A five-family house will initially require that two full floors and five residential units may be built, which, depending on the parking space regulations / development plan, result in between eight and ten parking spaces. I believe that with five units, one must already be barrier-free, which can certainly be achieved with an elevator even in the penthouse. I recall – unfortunately not the name – an architecture firm specialized in multi-family houses in Hamburg that has posted a fairly decent info PDF [ins Netz gestellt haben].

Also Weberhaus also builds multi-family houses etc. It is a prefabricated house provider that, in my opinion, offers everything between the upper mid-price segment and luxury. They can definitely provide you with a turnkey offer. Surely there is also a certain price reliability. How expensive the whole thing will be depends on what you want to build. What I mean is, 5 basic one-room apartments with 30m2 at the end of nowhere or 5 luxury 150m2 apartments in the center of Munich. Or the other way, you want to invest 2 million and have a house designed that fits your budget/plot.

To get an idea of the magnitude of such a project, we deal with the question of the total costs.

They are not really different from a single-family house. Just calculate with 2,500€/sqm + ancillary construction costs + basement/storage areas + outdoor facilities.

Apparently, you have not fully considered the implications of your investment decision. Such projects sound very appealing in theory; numbers are played with. In practice, however, they are difficult to implement and carry very high risks.

Germany has a landlord-hostile environment. Construction costs are very high, and the returns correspondingly low. Of course, it depends on the capital stock. I see the future prospects very skeptically, also from a political standpoint. This should not be overlooked.

A coming new government will push for redistribution from the wealthy to the non-wealthy. Keywords here are the increase of property tax, social security contributions on rental income, abolition of the speculation period for real estate transactions, restriction of passing on property tax to additional rental costs, landlord bearing CO2 costs, immense eco-requirements such as emission-free heating, or rising costs for gas and electricity.

This is only part of it. It’s best if you talk to a lawyer specialized in tenancy law. If he is honest, he will advise against it. As a landlord, you are like a sitting duck in court. With 5 residential units, you are small private landlords. And therefore the enemy of all left-green ideologists.

I myself have 10 apartments and am currently dealing with the sale of the property. It simply no longer makes sense. In my opinion, anyone speculating here with 2-3 percent capital returns will fall flat on their face.

But that is just my own personal opinion.