Construction project new build - budget exceeded - experiences?!

We are now considering whether to possibly reduce to 145 sqm or maybe handle everything ourselves.

Try using the search function yourself, there are a handful of threads just in the past year that deal extensively with the potential of self-contracting. The consensus is that no great leverage is to be expected, and depending on the market situation it is not a smart approach. A ratio of the expected costs to the "estimated" costs of 560:310 will not be evened out by cutting 20 sqm of fat, not even with a lot of own effort added. And for the outdoor facilities, nothing would be left either, you would have to get the construction site green through overgrowth :-( Mainly, I see the financing gap as the first thing to close. If I were you, I would want to let the planner work through the gap.

won't be evened out by 20 sqm of liposuction

... Primarily, I see closing the financing gap first.QUOTE]

well, they have to start somewhere, otherwise the latter won't work either.

But I believe most will take this path (so are we right now, for example). You start with the dream house on the dream plot, but as soon as that meets the real financial framework, both items have to be brought closer together:

- can you live with 150 sqm?

- does it have to be a €50k garage, or is a DIY double carport from a hardware store, which can be upgraded later (walls in stud construction, etc.) sufficient?

- is a basement still up to date, or just a storage space and guest room for people who come by twice a year for one night (in that case, I'll pay them €100 for a hotel night and that's fine)

- are there perhaps plots for less than €250/sqm or smaller plots?

- outdoor facilities: are a few concrete slabs and a pallet as an entrance and €20 for grass seed also enough in the first years? Or does it have to be the full program right away with a 50 sqm stepped terrace and raised beds?

Yes, and that is the typical picture. The main thing is a house, then the budget is blown, and you start cutting back. I don’t buy a Ferrari and then get rid of the tires and red paint because I’m short on money.

Of course not the tires and necessities, but otherwise: of course. When it comes to things whose prices you have no idea about, you almost have to. Our dream kitchen is currently also 5000 € over budget – I don’t immediately start refinancing but first ditch the solid bamboo countertop and the designer extractor hood. It would have been nice, but you quickly forget about it again if you don’t have it.

Hm, we have something like paving stones (only that, not including the entire garden stuff) and a terrace roof included in the loan right away - it's part of it, we want it, so the money has to be planned for that directly. However, we didn't think of a porch - I'm curious how that will fit in afterwards. I would definitely rather build smaller or not at all if the money is only enough for the house without the surrounding stuff.

We also thought that the money wouldn’t run out that quickly. Then came the unplanned demolition of the old garage (probably wouldn’t have survived the vibrating plates) and the new construction of the carport as a replacement (we couldn’t postpone that, the garage belongs to my mother, and if we already wreck it, we have to provide a replacement, whether we want to or not). The wooden basement turned out more expensive than expected, we need relatively many retaining walls in the outdoor area (no, and you can’t just do without them for now, otherwise you’d fall right off the terrace, and the planned and municipality-required parking spaces wouldn’t work either)... well, and now we are painting.

With a very heavy heart, we have at first given up the planned Cero windows for the two large sliding doors *cry*, but if we take conventional sliding doors from the window manufacturer instead, we save about 20–25K euros all at once.

We’ll see if the planned garden shed will still be possible in the end or not... but we can decide that when the time comes. Our house builder is known to be very, very conservative in his estimates, so with him it has always turned out rather cheaper than exceeding the budget.
Let’s hope then the garden shed is approved...

But years without any outdoor landscaping? Nah, that wouldn’t be for me either.