Defensive offer, or have house prices become so expensive?

For half a meter in the area of the house footprint, my basement rule clearly says that a basement is still a luxury - and all the more so just to exclude a utility room above ground from the floor area calculation.

What exactly does your basement rule look like?

So with twenty-six and only one child, I would normally have recommended a middle house. But if the plot is already there, a semi-finished house is more likely: ground floor finished, attic only prepped.

Money just decreases on the bank as well, so building yourself.
Yes, we still have to see what is possible. You could certainly arrange with something like that.

How exactly does your basement rule look?

That a built and an avoided basement cost approximately the same under identical conditions – roughly according to the formula: for every started 20 cm of height difference in the area of the house's footprint, 10% of the price of a full basement is incurred.

At the bank, the money just decreases as well,

... which does not apply for money that still has to be borrowed ;-). In emergencies, where one has to wall oneself in against the devaluation of their savings account balance, only very few builders at all, and especially no young ones, are affected. In this respect, we of course did not reckon with that – even a is statistically rather an "outlier" here; the largely representative "normal builder" in my opinion is something like .

Now don’t make the basement sound so bad to him.
A basement is worth more than just expensive storage space.
The basement is already included with you, you’ll just have to cut back a bit elsewhere.
Less living space, less KfW, a garage is not mandatory, you can do a lot of the outdoor areas yourself.
The basement saves built-up area, meaning you have more garden. In summer, there is nothing better than going down to the basement to cool off a bit.
I would never do without a basement; it feels like half the house is missing then.

I would never do without a basement, it feels like half the house is missing.

I feel the same way, but... friends of ours commissioned the basement as a separate contract and the 140 sqm usable basement costs 120,000 euros. In a rather structurally weak region with moderate construction prices. However, they were not allowed to build larger, so it had to be a basement. Compared to the design without a basement with a fill of about 1 m, they are now paying significantly more, which is why the garage is now becoming a carport, and so on and so forth. It seems that the costs for basements are rising even more than the rest.

Friends of ours commissioned the basement as a single contract and the 140 m2 usable basement costs 120,000 euros.

140 m2 usable basement? O.O o.O .... O.o That’s quite big, isn’t it?

I am really in favor of starting a separate thread with a bit more information. Whether the basement is a good idea or not, in my opinion, we know too little about that. Maybe something can be optimized regarding the floor plan.