Estimate of construction costs for a single-family house in the Tübingen area

2025-04-03 17:06:26

We have so far received offers from 3500€/sqm (local large construction company) to 2800 €/sqm from e.g. (probably ruled out due to timber frame). - 140sqm living area

- House + basement + single garage = max. 430,000 including own work in interior finishing (floors, painting, etc.)

You already have good sizes. I think nowadays you have to calculate at least 3k euros per sqm. 140*3k= 420k; with 3.5k it would already be 490k. Without garage.

- Buffer 10,000

Ambitiously low....

- Movable items like a kitchen and lighting/furniture I will leave out here because they are very individual and already taken into account.

Where taken into account?

Your explanations still make me doubt what here is wish and what reality.

2025-04-03 18:54:51

Then I wonder, how many square meters can we afford?

As already said.. and I agree: 130-150 sqm, depending on your requirements for the equipment and with whom you want/will build. Town & Country is cheaper, a somewhat more expensive general contractor possibly with higher-quality equipment.
And here we are - my crystal ball sometimes works

And then the attic as a basement substitute. Check!

2025-04-03 19:30:50

- House + basement + single garage = max. 430,000 including own work in interior finishing (floors, painting, etc.)

Then take a "cheap provider" as a reference:

This is the house without "builder-supplied," without basement, without ancillary building costs, without basement, without garage. 270k house 10k prefabricated garage 75k basement (then about 75 sqm – easier to calculate) as a simple pure utility basement ==> total 355k Then your builder costs come on top and above all your special requests. KfW40? More than the minimum number of sockets? Nicer staircase? Basement perhaps usable with electricity and water? Etc. That quickly adds up and gladly lets your "max." explode. Feel free to read up on what Town & Country ultimately costs (there are plenty of threads on that here too)

2025-04-03 21:34:56

You already have good sizes. I believe by now at least 3k euro per sqm is being calculated here.
140*3k= 420k; with 3.5k it would already be 490k. Without garage.

Do you calculate the minimum 3 to 3.5 including the basement?

Judging by the slight gradient of the dead-end street, the 11ant basement rule ("With or without basement: a rule as a decision-making tool") would say that a basement here mainly costs "unnecessary" money, therefore.

You should also take to heart Yvonne’s advice to use potential spaces as basement replacement rooms.

The Living Space Ordinance is called that just to avoid a multi-line name. It certainly also concerns the counting and crediting of utility room and traffic areas. For the total of all room areas, one simply adds "the VAT" twice in a lump sum: once for proportional traffic areas (hallways, stairs) and once for the wall-surrounded areas. 130 sqm of living room sum results in about 180 sqm; the "one-and-a-half-storey house" thus has a need of 120 here, and the "Instead villa" 90 sqm of house footprint.

That’s why the expert will never understand why the layman so eagerly gets stuck in building material science as if the philosopher's stone lies therein. "Forget the ring, the ring is rubbish, I got it from a gum ball machine!" (Mel Brooks in "Spaceballs"). Follow the keyword "stone mantra" (here or with me) and simply build with the wall builder that is the bestseller (or second place) at your preferred processor—don’t try to convert them to any test-winner wall construction. With "Duo Therm" you have reliably hit the exception to my stone mantra recommendation: that is reinforced concrete poured into an insulating formwork block and (pun alert) the core of many customer complaints. This provider is not in the field of my advisers.

You should consistently separate your actual house building and your house building knowledge urge as much as between work and schnapps. In factory visits, watch as a mouse-facts story how prefabricated house walls are made, but do not link that to decisions for your real home project. In practical use, it is completely irrelevant whether, for example, the lightweight expanded clay wall is interwoven with a mortar mesh (because it was built on site from forty-five-dot-six-liter macromolecules) or not (because it was cast in a hall into a custom mold). For the factory visitor this may be an exciting event cooking, in practice it is just an equivalent alternative and no more. Unlike the burger or takeaway coffee, the VAT rate here is the same to go. Even the differences between pumice and expanded clay lie behind the comma, those between Hauser and Dennert solid houses even further. At Xella (aerated concrete) you can even order "the same in green" either palletized in yellow (Ytong) or orange (Hebel) foil on the construction site. Brilliant, this is finally real inclusion: the difference is (simply because exactly zero) completely irrelevant whether you are colorblind or not exactly the same, so not even like that between a Kangoo and a Citan. "Wrong! — like the second, that is quality! — botched and screwed up ..." But at least it’s amusing for the expert what possible difference some laymen suspect and are ready to rigorously train themselves to taste out. April, April! (In the next issue of Bild there will definitely be double-oath Erlking photos of the Wolpertinger — if you have smoked enough chemtrails, you can even see them clearly without 3D glasses.) No, there are only two concepts for stone houses here: unload large blocks with the little crane of the 7.5-ton truck and mortar them layer by layer or unload large blocks with a separate crane from the low-loader and mortar only at the house corners. In both cases, the desired target thermal transmittance value can be achieved monolithically, with ETICS or WDIS. In the world of wooden wall constructions, the variety is only slightly less clear. There would also be room cells if someone’s single walls are not 3D enough yet. No magic at all!

140 to 150 sqm times 3k would be 420 to 450k total. There is still a generous selection of recommended providers. Simply make a decisive choice during the dough resting phase, with or through an independent consultant like me (I regularly mention colleagues here as well) or on your own. You have a need, and whoever can curb their FOMO does not need to "allow themselves more." A normal family 2E2K needs about 110 to 120 sqm excluding home office.

Dough resting sounds good, but I am not calm at all — with the flood of information it is enormously overwhelming.

I am honest here, how we arrive at 140 sqm — I have to laugh while reading:

- Look at floor plans of other projects (what kind of room feeling is theoretically created here?)
- Look at house catalogs — consider living area and say yes, it must be at least that much?
- Adopt house dimensions from the houses in the catalogs?

But somehow that feels wrong, what is enough? You can’t derive that from an apple-to-orange comparison.

So we wrote down what each room must at least have, so we are satisfied with each single room — taken individually. Then we said okay, our living area is important and we want to have the possibility to set up a long table, for example. So the house must be longer and wider also so that the hallways do not become too narrow.

Is that so wrong?

We have clear ideas about how we want to live in the property, wouldn’t it be advisable to invest money in a freelance architect, then request the house builders within the price range with this wish plan, and then compare content-wise equally?

Judging by the slight gradient of the dead-end street, the 11ant basement rule ("With or without basement: a rule as a decision-making tool"), it would

Oh, I have noticed that so far. I was already wondering where the water from our house (wastewater and gray water) flows away? I probably need to get informed on the topic of drainage first. Can I read information from the development plan that I receive for the evaluation of this matter?

The textual provisions mention the necessity of a cistern. Is that related to the gradient?

Judging by the slight gradient of the dead-end street, the 11ant basement rule

Or do we need a lifting station?

2025-04-03 23:09:26

So we wrote down what the rooms must have at a minimum,

Is that really so wrong?

Yes. Sort of yes. But you’re not the only one making that mistake.

We have clear ideas about how we want to live in the property,

And that is exactly what is told or written down to the architect.
Avoid specifying the square meters; instead write that the dining area should be sufficient for 4 people in everyday life but that a longer banquet table is needed several times a year. Then he knows not to plan narrow rooms around corners.
If you write that you like taking baths, he should design a nice bathtub for you. If it is described that you work from home 3 times a week, then he plans the necessary office with at least 8 sqm. If there is also a note about relatives visiting 3 times a year, then he expands the office to a size where there can also be a pull-out couch plus a wardrobe. If your wife collects shoes and they absolutely need to be accessible, then he plans the cloakroom larger than it has to be. And so on.

I had already wondered where the water flows from our house (wastewater and sewage)?

There is a drainage plan for that.

Can I read out information from the development plan that I get to evaluate the topic?

The textual requirements mention the necessity of a cistern.

That has something to do with the infiltration capacity of the soil, but also with the sealing of surfaces.

Is that related to the slope?

Nope.

Or do we need a lifting station?

Nope.
As long as you fiddle around alone and by yourself, you waste a lot of time.
Visit show homes and model parks, take a tape measure and a notebook with you, talk to experts at fairs.
Look at model houses that fit the house and your needs.
What you are not allowed to do, however, is sign because supposedly there is a 5 or 10% discount.

2025-04-04 00:14:47

Dough resting sounds good, but I am by no means calm – the flood of information is overwhelming.

Dough resting is not a means against an information flood, but a phase in my house-building schedule. It lies between "Module A," carried out with an independent architect, and the further planning, where either the preliminary draft worked out with the architect matures into a design or an alternative construction proposal found during the direction-setting (again not by an entity with sales interests!) is adapted.

I am honest here, how we come to 140 sqm – I have to laugh while reading:
- Looking at floor plans of other projects (what kind of spatial feeling arises theoretically here?)
- Looking at house catalogs – considering living space and saying, yes, it must be at least that much?
- Adopting the house dimensions of the houses in the catalogs?
But somehow it feels wrong, what is enough? You can’t derive that from an apple to orange comparison.

That is why I started "Bauen jetzt" (more precisely: my beloved partner and I founded it), and together published the guide "A House-Building Schedule, also for You: the Phase Model of the HOAI!" and meanwhile have supplemented it with around forty foundational posts. The house-building schedule explains how to use the HOAI’s phase model as a guide for your planning approach – regardless of which phases you engage architect, engineer, or comparable professional expertise. One of the most important phases – inserted between service phases 2 and 3 of the HOAI – is an active break, for which I borrowed the term dough resting from the baking trade, where a free owner’s advisor can excellently perform the direction-setting. This can also be done by any of my colleagues, or – albeit at the cost of losing its therapeutic effect – by the prospective builders themselves.

"Wrong" would be an inappropriate term for your approach. In detail regarding the steps mentioned:
1. Important is the selection of those other projects; transgenic transfers (e.g., trying to reproduce ideas from flat plots on a hillside) fail accordingly.
2. In house catalogs, you should primarily not look at the houses but at the people pictured. Are these people living in circumstances “like us now” or rather “two or three salary raises ahead”; are these people living based on needs or more representationally? – whoever looks here as if browsing a travel catalog looking for a holiday by the sea or in the mountains will only be able to mislead themselves maximally.
3. Orienting on house dimensions works only to a limited extent. If the rooms don’t fit in number (for example, because of a third child or a second home office, or because a hillside requires different allocation of rooms to levels), expert assistance will be needed to transcribe from violin to piano concert. What you can certainly derive correctly is that downsizing functioning house designs proportionally to your own budget compared to the quoted house price would go wrong.

We have clear ideas of how we want to live in the property; would it not be advisable to invest money in an independent architect, then ask the house builders within our price range with this plan, and then make content-equivalent comparisons?

Oh dear, just two lines of question, but so spicy they require a lot of attention. What my schedule calls Module A you definitely need and must always pay for – even if many providers offer it in a slimmed-down version as “necessary architect services” apparently at a favorable price or even “included” (meaning the costs are not separately stated). Never try to exhaust everything a financier calculates as affordable with “but please with cream on top.” Your children won’t get better final grades because of a nineteenth square meter child’s room. Go to an independent architect only with a list of needs and wishes, never with a self-drawn push on how the dream house is supposed to look. I recommend (this too can be read under “services” with me and works if self-made following the same recipe) making the “inquiry” to providers in two stages – also just to leverage the potential of dough resting and direction-setting.

Oh, I have seen that so far. I was wondering where does the water from our house flow (wastewater and sewage)?
I guess I have to educate myself first about drainage. Can I read out any info from the development plan that helps me assess the topic?

I had already pointed out in your private road thread not to be so passive in clarifying as the municipality imagines the role of the private cul-de-sac regarding technical supply (especially water supply and drainage).

In the textual stipulations it is mentioned that a cistern is necessary. Does that have to do with the slope?
[+] Or do we need a lifting station?

Prescribing a cistern (possibly and/or a soakaway) has other reasons. I see a lifting station as necessary here only if you build an (underground) cellar despite a flat plot and perhaps want to equip it with its own toilet.

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Estimate of construction costs for a single-family house in the Tübingen area

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