Contract for work before property purchase - real estate acquisition tax?

Hello everyone,

Unfortunately, the post was sent faster than I could type it, so the subject unfortunately only contains a comma instead of "Grunderwerbsteuer bei Werkvertragsabschluss VOR Grundstückskauf".

Regarding my concern:
We have signed a contract for work with a renowned home builder BEFORE we had a plot of land.
Now we have a suitable plot of land in a new development area in prospect, but the land seller said that we will very likely also have to pay property transfer tax on the house. The reason given is that we signed the contract for work before the purchase of the land.

Can that be true?
The land seller and the home builder are completely independent of each other; they don’t even know each other.

Best regards

Hello,
I have completed the headline according to your intentions.

We concluded a contract for work with a renowned house manufacturer BEFORE we had a plot of land.

This sentence contains a contradiction in itself: a renowned company would not get you to sign if there was no plot of land yet.

But now you have one, although I still cannot provide an answer to that.

Greetings from the house building forum from
Yvonne

From whom are you getting the plot and who brokered it for you? What does the house manufacturer have to do with it?

And reputable (in the sense of serious) house building companies do not sign contracts without clarifying the land situation.

Thank you very much for your feedback.

We found the plot on the internet; it is marketed by a company specializing in land development. There is no developer tie or anything similar.

Completely independently of this, we signed a contract for work with a house construction company a few weeks ago. At that time, we did not yet know the building area; we originally had a different building area in mind.

So both companies are in no way connected.

Good day,

Can that be true?
Land sellers and house manufacturers are completely independent of each other; they do not even know each other.

The ECJ ruling from 2008 confirms the increasing tendency to subject the entire object (house and land) to real estate transfer tax. **A separate treatment and thus tax only on the land is _only_ considered if the new owner independently looks for a suitable construction company and in doing so has no connection to the seller of the land.

You have basically taken the reverse path; first choosing the provider and then "independently" searching for a plot of land. The tax office will contact you in due time and request certain information from you; fill out the questionnaire and then see what happens. Although the concluded contract for work and services is in place - why actually? - and you really no longer have a choice to decide on a different provider. On the other hand, you apparently chose the provider voluntarily without any coercion.

I would say it will be an interesting decision.

**Source: my homepage

Rhenish greetings

The only important thing is that the land purchase and the house construction company are economically not related, right?