Finding and tracking new development areas and projects

Hello forum!

I have come across tips about property searching here before, especially regarding building gaps. But there are also the quite obvious new development areas that might be an option, and I just wanted to ask how you usually locate and possibly track them. Situation recently, for example, in a thread here: the thread starter said the property was the only option because, among other things, there absolutely were no new development areas nearby (I think it was somewhere south of Hamburg or so? But this happens quite often). Then a user comes along and posts information about 4 new development areas within a 30km radius or so (all from different municipalities). That sounded to me either like "someone nearby is also searching and knows about this" or like "someone is much better at finding new development areas than the OP" (and than I would be, even though I’m looking somewhere completely different). If the latter is the case, then I would like to know your tips and tricks ;)

For example, we are looking in the Ruhr area (working in Essen and Dortmund). In principle, we are quite open to where we look, as long as the transport connections are reasonable. But that means a lot of municipalities come into question and I find it difficult to get any kind of overview of where something interesting might happen in the near future. We currently don’t want to build/buy yet, but probably around 2024/25/26. But usually, such things don’t happen overnight and a new development area doesn’t just come into existence without lead time.

That means, priority right now (besides saving money) is to locate interesting properties and projects that might be options (beyond that, of course, to get clearer about what we can and want ourselves). So far, I haven’t come up with much better than searching on the websites of the municipalities I’m keeping an eye on to see if there is anything exciting and making a list for myself with what is where, whether it’s an option, and whether I should keep tracking if there is any news about it. That mentioned thread made me wonder if I’m overlooking quite obvious sources and/or areas... I also find projects developed by real estate developers interesting, but so far when I’ve come across them, it was more by chance.

So dear swarm, how did you come across "your" area or how do you track interesting areas for yourself that are not yet advertised?

Best regards

We had not yet intensified the systematic phase when we found our plot of land. We went out on weekends for excursions and looked at advertised plots – including some that nominally seemed less suitable. Where we liked it, we took small dog walks and talked to people we encountered. For one of the plots that actually wasn’t suitable (too small), it turned out that only one plot was advertised, but there were 3 to buy along with a small forest. The seller team (an insolvency administrator, a real estate agent, and a bank) was happy to get rid of everything in one go, and we had our plot. If I were you, I would identify the locations that meet the requirement "verkehrsgünstig" and watch prices on the relevant portals. Look at one or two, start conversations in the preferred locations, and continue the search with the information obtained there. I think the chances of finding something suitable increase with personal contact on site. Let’s call it "social engineering." Of course, it also depends on your personality; whether it suits you I obviously can’t say.

If you are only looking for a plot in a new development area, I would recommend using the Google News search. Simply enter the term "Neubaugebiet" + [Name Stadt/Landkreis] here. In my experience, this yields better results since the regular web search returns too many offers from developers, etc. With Google News, you can also create an alert to be notified of new results.

If you are generally looking for a plot, the "11ant Barthel Tipps" are typically recommended here in the forum (can be found, for example, via the forum search or Google).

Foreword: I hardly believe in the strategy of expanding one’s search radius after not finding anything for a long time or pushing one’s search profile to the compromise pain threshold. I rather advise the seemingly illogical approach of sharply focusing on the ideal lid for the pot (especially with small or soon-to-be-planned children) or (especially with children not yet planned or already attending secondary school) looking for an "intermediate house" for a maximum of ten years and thereby being successful with terraced and semi-detached house projects.

We currently don’t want to build/buy yet, but probably around 2024/25/26.

With that, you would have already lost with many offers: if a municipality announces a building area now, they want to sell starting 2022 (and you would often have to have started building in 2024). It’s probably better to search patiently among private individual sellers.
But there is also good news: the 11ant Barthel tips are already in the works to be made available in a Book on Demand format (however, only after the Book Fair) and to offer the service of land consulting in 2022. That would still be conveniently early enough for you.

We printed out a big map of places around Berlin (we want to move away from Berlin but stay nearby). One person still has 2 office days a week in Berlin, so distance by public transport was important. So we looked at all the places in the surrounding area and checked the connection to Berlin – then wrote down all the places that were suitable in terms of distance. Entered all into an Excel sheet with various additions, according to our wishes for the property / place of residence. Then did a Google search with the name of the place plus [Neubaugebiet], looked up contact details there and wrote emails. For all municipalities where we found nothing on Google, we searched the homepage and also looked for the responsible person there and wrote an email.

Surprisingly, there was a lot of feedback and some properties came out of it (none suitable for us, but still!).

In the end, we were very lucky. After 3 weeks of intensive searching, we got a callback from a property seller we had contacted right at the beginning. A super nice property for us, and although the financing took longer and some things came up, the property is now secured.

You would have already lost on many offers with that: if a municipality now announces a development area, they want to sell from 2022 (and you often have to have started building in 2024). It's better to patiently search from private individual sellers.

I have to partly disagree. Especially if you – like the thread starter – have more lead time, new development areas fit well with that. We have experienced here (Düsseldorf area and towards the Lower Rhine) that the municipalities announce the construction phases of the new development areas with very long lead times. Through Google Alerts as mentioned above, you learn even earlier when something is planned (is a topic in city council meetings) and where you should look more closely.

So if you start searching now, hardly anything will pop up unexpectedly. Over time you get an overview of the planned new development areas and what is even feasible.

Something like in the southern Hamburg area doesn’t exist around here. There they still have dozens of affordable plots left in new development areas. With a 30-minute S-Bahn connection to downtown Hamburg. But those aren’t taken because it’s south of the Elbe. That’s just not done. :D

Here you really have to keep the areas on your radar long-term, register directly in the expression of interest phase, and then either rely on luck in the draw or participate in the madness of the bidding process.