Experienced home builders wanted! Building? Renovating? Turnkey?

Hello forum!

To possibly answer my question without a post, I did a bit of research but didn’t quite find the right information:

The core of the matter: My wife & I want to have a house and still have 2 years until the planned move-in. As a note: Our budget for EVERYTHING (house & land) is max. €200,000. We want a property with Passive House standard, because it should still have some value in a few years and also remain for our children. I am skilled in craftsmanship, I am a heating, ventilation, air conditioning, and sanitary technician and I trust myself with the planning and installation of the heating (?), sanitary facilities, and ventilation system.

Now there are so many possibilities:
- Buy a built-up plot and simply move in
- Buy a built-up plot and renovate
- Buy a plot and build turnkey
- Buy a plot and take a shell house
- Buy a plot and erect a kit house

...and those were not even all the variants!

Now my questions:

[*]Can someone perhaps share from their experience how much own contribution is possible?
[*]Is there any savings potential at all?
[*]Simply personal opinions and experiences whether kit house, turnkey or shell house? Or rather renovate?

Thank you in advance for your opinions and experience reports!

Bellyn

Hello Bellyn,

how much does your building plot cost?

Not yet decided...

Hello, 6correct.

There is not yet a fixed price for the plot, but the goal is to be around €50,000 for 450 to 500 m².
That means the house budget is around €150,000.

Not much...:(

Hello Bellyn,

then it looks like this:
Land 53,000 € including additional costs
Additional costs approx. 25,000 €
Base plate with earthworks approx. 15,000 €
(The basement is not included in this tight budget)

200,000 € - 53,000 € - 25,000 € - 15,000 € = 107,000 € house price
A passive house with own work costs approx. 1,600 € per m2 living space so
you can build approx. 67 m2 living space.

For approx. 130 m2 living space you should therefore have e.g. approx. 300,000 € budget.

Not very encouraging...

€200,000 - €53,000 - €25,000 - €15,000 = €107,000 house price
A passive house with own labor costs about €1,600 per m2 of living space, so
you can build about 67 m2 of living space.

Actually, I didn’t want to build a doghouse. We’ll just keep looking for a plot and see how it works out.

But I’m still interested in hearing experiences about building your own home. Simply subjective statements, factual reports:
- What own labor was done...
- Whether a kit house lives up to its promises...

Thanks for feedback.

You can save money with your own labor - we did many things ourselves and saved a lot of money that way. However, you shouldn't overestimate yourself because usually, you run out of time. For some tasks, you really have to work full-time for a longer period to make progress, and normally you don't have unlimited vacation.

Fortunately, we were finished after 3 months - especially working after regular hours becomes quite a burden over time.

A passive house is indeed a rather complicated matter and requires a certain amount of quite expensive technology.

If you want to put yourself through that, only a shell house or a complete self-build is really an option.