Costs for extension and partial modernization of existing property

Especially in the Berlin area, there have been massive changes regarding top locations for some time. Many things that used to be great led to a wave of sales a few years ago. Keyword: BER and its flight routes.

No aircraft noise in my region, therefore attention has been increasing since the flight routes were published.

Edit: Not everything has to be "Putting Green." A bit of forest and some natural areas have their charm.

Speckgürtel is a term that everyone can interpret differently, right?

Sort of. However, your property is so far from any definition of Speckgürtel that this is actually not debatable in this context. In the Speckgürtel, there is a streetcar or S-Bahn connection or at least a direct bus connection and some other structures that _do not_ exist in the immediate vicinity of your location. Otherwise, the price per sqm would not be 30€.

To be honest, I don't even know what we are discussing here? You claimed the property has experienced a value increase of 20-30€ in the last 2 years. That is - with all due respect - complete nonsense.

20km to the Berlin city limits is Speckgürtel for me - maybe not for you.

Distance is not everything; it is much more about accessibility and infrastructure. Without even knowing where exactly this is, I can tell you straight away that there is no hospital, no cinema, no train station there. Also, your property is so far from the town center that you would have to walk at least 30 minutes to the church tower, probably longer than an hour.

I just looked again at the standard land values, which logically can only be based on sold properties in the area, and in the corners of the small town, where several sales took place in recent months, the price per sqm is now 80€/m². In the area where the potential property is located, the old town center where everything is built up and only sold upon death or senility, the standard value is quite stable. Where the town is expanding, prices are exploding. How do you explain standard land values in a town with 17,000 inhabitants ranging from 20€/m² - 80€/m²?

That is not an explosion but fundamentally still too low. Pure arable land has a price of <5€. If it becomes building land, the price increases at least by the development costs, i.e., what has been invested in infrastructure for roads, cables, planning, etc. Depending on the standard of execution, this alone is about ~40€/m², meaning anything traded below 50€/m² has either old infrastructure that must be renewed in the foreseeable future or the location is so poor that nobody wants to go there.

The explosions happen elsewhere, namely where prices of +200€/m² are actually paid and where infrastructure grows accordingly.

Demand is high, supply is scarce.

Supply cannot be scarce if a property of this size is basically thrown at you for 1€.

Thus, logically, existing properties are also traded at high prices. Current offer on a real estate portal: 60m² single-family house on 1,500m² land near a lake (just under a kilometer) for 160,000€ plus broker fee.

Whether that is high or low cannot be judged based on this data.

This region is surrounded by a total of 4 natural swimming lakes with several hectares of area.

Exactly. Wilderness as far as the eye can see, recreational area for Berlin. Fits the standard land value price. Demand for living/life there is rather low compared to the real Speckgürtel.

If you want to badmouth things,

I'm not trying to badmouth things; I am warning you against blindly diving into an investment whose consequences are completely unclear to you. Standard land values do not fall from the sky; appraisal committees may sometimes be rather cautious, but the appraisers are not completely stupid either – hence it is to be assumed that the standard value of 30€ is appropriate and not completely undervalued. I am definitely not responsible for that; I neither determined the value nor is it my appraisal.

then you can do so gladly, but please refer to facts; otherwise, I ask you to stay on topic.

I refer to facts. I am on topic.

I did not ask you to evaluate my region.

Yes, exactly that you did when you started this thread. It is not my fault that the result does not match your expectations.

I am smart enough myself to know that a house for 500,000€ in the desert might be worth less than in Fort Lauderdale.

Well then be smart and don’t put yours in the desert. Alternatively, you can upload the cadastral map of the property with the location designation here – then you can be very quickly told the difference between Speckgürtel and the location.

Best regards
Dirk Grafe

Don't shoot down Dirk's answer right away. He means well and argues very well. For me, these are all pretty bitter facts. Sleep on it..

Obviously, this is a dick-measuring contest that could go on forever.

When I ask for a cost estimate for renovation and extension, I am once again asking you not to evaluate my residential location (10 km from BAB10, 10 km from BAB13, 20 km from the Berlin city border, direct rail connection to Berlin, etc.), because after all, I want to live there, not you. If you have to pay well over €100/m², then I feel sorry for you, shame about the money. If it is worth it to you, then by all means, be happy there as far as I’m concerned. Values around €140/m² can also be paid in my local neighborhood, by the way, if you’re headed towards Berlin. If you consult a large well-known search engine for "Brandenburg Viewer," you can click through the Mark Brandenburg and scan the area. Have fun doing that.

For my part, I will probably settle for the supposedly worse residential location and have already explained above that I was able to discover an upward trend in recent years. If you do not interpret the explosion I estimated as a Hiroshima atomic bomb, then it is always in the eye of the beholder. Achieving a plus of €20,000 - €30,000 on 1,000 m² of building land within a few years according to the land value guideline means to me that there was more profit than in a classic daily allowance account.

By the way, if you were to come to me and ask for advice because you are the production manager of a pharmaceutical company and will have to deal with a new regulation on "product serialization" in the future, in which your expertise may not be as sufficient as mine, I would give you my advice on that and would not tell you how bad the headache tablets you produce are. I sincerely hope you understand the point behind this.

With that said, thank you very much for your evaluation of my rural, structurally weak, and above all East German region – but I already know where I live.

In case anyone here in the house construction forum still has suggestions and tips for me that move in the direction of my original concern, I look forward to an addition. Although the almost golden answer already came on page 1 and additionally the tip to consult an architect specializing in renovations again was not so bad either. It seems logical that not everyone can do everything equally well.

Obviously, this is a dick-measuring contest that could go on forever.

A gentleman remains silent and enjoys.

When I ask for a cost estimate for renovation and extension, I kindly ask you once again not to evaluate my residential location (10km to BAB10, 10km to BAB13, 20km to the Berlin city border, direct train connection to Berlin, etc.), because I want to live there, not you.

It was not me who evaluated it, but the appraisal committee or the appraiser who cited the appraisal committee’s value in his report and obviously considered it correct. A small but significant difference.

If you have to pay well over €100/m², then I feel sorry for you, pity about the money.

Price ≠ value.

If it’s worth it to you, then by all means be happy there. By the way, prices around €140/m² can also be paid in my local neighborhood, provided you are headed towards Berlin. If you ask a large well-known search engine for "Brandenburg Viewer," you can click through the state of Brandenburg and scan the area. Have fun with that.

No, thanks.

As for me, I am probably content with the supposedly worse residential location and have already explained to you above that I was able to identify an upward trend in recent years.

Well, the appraiser obviously could not detect this trend.

If you do not interpret the explosion I estimated as a Hiroshima atomic bomb, it always lies in the eye of the beholder. To realize a plus of €20,000 - €30,000 on 1,000m² of building land within a few years according to the standard land value means to me that there was more yield than in a classic daily money account.

Unfortunately, as a professional you are not allowed to calculate it like that. If that were the case, the standard land value would have had to be negative five years ago. That is out of the question.

By the way, if you came to me and asked for advice because you are the production manager of a pharmaceutical company and in the future have to deal with a new regulation on "product serialization," where your expertise might not be as sufficient as mine, then I would give you my advice and not tell you how bad the headache tablets you produce are. I very much hope you understand the point behind this.

Well, I strongly advise you to look at the facts again. An absolute value of €30 is simply not an increase of €30.

In this sense, thank you very much for your evaluation of my rural, structurally weak, and above all East German region – but I already know where I live.

Once again. I am not the one evaluating this, but rather the local appraisal committee and explicitly the author of the report you cited. Combined with the value increases you forecast, there is a stark contradiction.

Best regards
Dirk Grafe

A gentleman remains silent and enjoys.

Is that the reason why you are writing again – because a gentleman would remain silent?

Unfortunately, as a professional, you are not allowed to calculate it that way. If that were the case, the standard land value would have had to be negative five years ago. That is out of the question.

You urgently need to train your comprehension skills and not twist things to suit yourself, as you have done quite often in your previous posts. It is not mentioned with a single word that my potential plot of land underwent this increase in value, but rather the immediate surroundings within 5 kilometers, districts, street sections, etc. Or can you tell from that ("this part of Brandenburg is actually in the commuter belt of Berlin and the standard land values alone have risen sharply by 20 - 30€/m² in the past 2 years – and there is no end in sight.") that this particular plot of land is meant? I cannot, because if that were the case, I would certainly have specified it directly and not used “from-to indications.”

If you had used the Brandenburg Viewer, you would have recognized from the standard land values that in the region often one street section is valued at 20,-€/m² and a few streets away it is 80,-€/m². Thus, it makes sense that the 20,-€ street section did not experience the increase.

As a clever professional, it should also be clear to you why that might be the case. It is not because the residents of the 80,-€ street section are five minutes faster at the bakery and therefore live in a more valuable area, but because there was still available building land there and thus it was sold at the current valid market price. In the 20,-€ area, everything is simply built on and nobody is giving anything up or dying off.

As a clever professional, you surely know where the standard land value comes from. Otherwise, explain to me why the standard land value by the lake is lower than by the railway? Please don’t say that the plots by the railway are so expensive because you are quicker at the station. If in the respective district, street section nothing was realized because nothing was sold, then there will also be no significant changes in the standard land value.

But you know all this anyway, as a professional.