Extension options under §34 of the Building Code

Good evening everyone,

first of all, a heartfelt thank you to the active forum members who really make everyday life around buying/building a house easier with their knowledge/experience.

We live in the beautiful, but also known to be quite expensive city of Munich and recently won the bid for a real "lover’s property" within the city area.

Problem:
Due to the surrounding buildings and the extensions made to the terraced middle house of the settlement, we currently assume that the current condition is the maximum we can get in terms of area. We are interested to know if you share this assessment or if you see realistic chances with this terraced house to enlarge the property by widening it to the north towards the property boundary (e.g. by an extension). We are not under time pressure for the whole matter.

About the property:
The plot is 316 m² in size and is located in a purely residential area (WR according to the land use plan). It is built with a terraced middle house from 1937. Around 1980, an extension was already added on the ground floor and in 2000 dormers were installed in the upper and attic floors. In the current state, the house has a living area of 60 m² with a usable floor area of about 125 m². The house is in need of renovation.

Building law:
There is no development plan for the area. Building law according to §34 Federal Building Code (Baugesetzbuch) applies.

If further information is needed to assess the matter, please just let us know. Otherwise, we are aware that in the end only the building authority can provide final information.

Thank you very much for your support!

whether you share this assessment

Based on your attachments, yes, based on the aerial image from the relevant map service provider, I still see a small chance, since the three other corner houses at the intersection have at least constructed ancillary facilities there. On the other hand, they don’t have to be legally there, ancillary facilities at the neighbor do not entitle one to expand their own main facilities, and the building lines and boundaries in the second picture have to come from somewhere; presumably from a repealed development plan, whose provisions are also often used as de facto building lines and boundaries according to Section 34 of the Building Code.

I once saw in a housing magazine, years ago, an extension of a cellar of a terraced house in a row house estate (something with Marienkäfer…) where they expanded the cellar towards the terrace and gave the "roof" of the cellar extension a glass roof. That might be a possibility?

How many floors are there? 60m2 WF and 125m2 NF somehow sounds illogical for a [REH].

For the specific case, this helps you little, but here in Nuremberg, in a similar building situation, almost every corner house on the ground floor now has an extension, sometimes very close to the street. The extensions are usually built both into the garden and towards the street. Into the depth of the garden so that the 3m distance to the neighboring property is maintained. However, I have not yet seen such an extension on the ground floor and upper floor. By the way, all these extensions have been built in the last 2-3 years. Therefore, they are unfortunately not yet shown on Google Maps.

Shown in the Bayern Atlas, so probably with building permission ...

Thank you very much for the quick responses. There was apparently a development plan, which was already revised in March 1937. To the west, south & east of the terraced housing estate there is municipal multi-storey residential construction. For these partial areas there is a valid development plan according to which the old buildings were demolished over the past decades and rebuilt with a significantly higher floor area ratio. The second picture also comes from this plan.
My planning premise is that the ancillary facilities of the other REHs are legally located there.


Correct - the entire housing estate is called "Maikäfersiedlung". The neighbors told us during our estate tour about very "elongated" cellars.


Thanks for the hint - that’s probably true if I add it up. Last night I took the area information from a similarly renovated house exposé...

It should approximately be corrected like this:
Basement 41m² --> NFl, was often partially converted into living space in other houses
Ground floor 41m² --> living space (excluding the terrace area)
Upper floor 19m² --> living space
Attic 7m² --> Nfl

At the end of the plots there are sometimes quite large garages/garden sheds. Probably the other exposé had additionally added these areas to the Nfl.


That was also the idea interestingly brought up by the financing bank. "You can definitely get more out of it." Since the living area is currently low, even just an extension on the ground floor would of course be a significant improvement.