House Building Forum - Would you buy or build a house again?

Maybe. But right now, I don't care. I'll deal with it when the time comes. For now, the topic will be put aside until mid-January. Maybe we won't build anymore at all. We'll see. As I said... it has priority 10000 for me right now.

We also thought for a long time about building new. We were even quite far along with a construction company. Everything was basically already planned. When we then informed him that we would now buy a house instead of building one, he remained very friendly. He said, In 10 years they will still be there. Maybe then we would still want to build new. He took it very sportingly and was not upset with us. That is also the risk you take when you advise beforehand. Although we did not build with him, due to our positive experiences, my wife's cousin then built with them and they were satisfied. So being friendly can pay off, and the hours with us were basically not wasted. PS: For us, it was also a gut feeling that said no to new construction, because financially it would have been significantly more. In retrospect, we are quite glad that we did it that way.

Hello,

My conclusion: Building with a general contractor / property developer? No, thanks! If we take up the topic again, we’ll go the architect route. I’ve really had enough of conversations like these, haggling over every euro like at the bazaar and the blame game. We have now looked at 9 different general contractors, talked to them, negotiated, hoped, worried, got annoyed, were frustrated, etc. Now we have 14 months behind us... I’m done for the time being!

I’ll give you the other side to consider....

With every interested party, we currently conduct (mostly) 5 conversations + site visits + reference talks – often involving experts, for example geotechnical engineers – until only the option of signing remains on the table. Meaning, they know absolutely everything needed to make a decision; including a fixed price based on a detailed bill of quantities.

In the past, the rule of thumb was to have 10 negotiations with three appointments each and “one” interested party would become a customer. For the last two years, the “3” turned into a “5+”, and this year until the end of Q3, the clientele included people who – upon closer inspection – should already have been kindly turned away in advance. They took, absorbed, used, and ran – thus equipped with valuable information – to the cheapest competitor.

Serious clarification was not appreciated by the vast majority of prospective builders until the end of Q3; in this respect – as surely we are not the only ones to have had this kind of experience – I can perfectly understand that quite a few saleswomen are frustrated and sometimes vent their resentment. Each of us knows that not every conversation leads to a contract for work, that we have to provide a lot of preliminary work, the chemistry also has to fit – but what happened this year … sometimes I literally have no words.

What I can no longer hear is “it’s on the internet, it was written…” – before I recommended signing a contract for work at the consumer advice center; today one on the internet.

Now you come:

And unfortunately, I have to say, one seller is like the other. You can’t trust anyone in this industry.

Thank you very much!

We awarded the trades individually, I found the interaction with the craftsmen quite different from that with the general contractors/general planners we spoke to. I didn’t have as negative an impression as xycrazy, but it was still off-putting enough to avoid a general contractor/general planner for that reason.

However, you should plan plenty of time for planning/evaluation and have access to trusted expertise for the tendering of the main trades. In addition, you should basically know one or the other person for many trades (civil engineer/electrician/plumber/heating/carpenter, etc.).

: it was exactly the same with us... the called-up amount, the associated obligation, and what was delivered did not match 100%. We certainly wouldn’t have had a problem if we had been made to feel at the last minute that they really wanted us as customers. But every € was haggled over like at a bazaar. That wasn’t fair either. You can negotiate hard, but remain fair in the matter. For 8 weeks we had the feeling that certain amounts were sneakily slipped to us without transparency. And as it turned out, for example, the cistern was suddenly no longer included, although it was always said to be part of it. Just 5000€ gone like that. And there were a few other issues too. When we then politely asked for clarification so that we could understand it, he got angry. I think to myself: if I already claim as my philosophy "Relaxed building," then I have to give the customer that feeling too. When we said we didn’t feel good about it, I as a seller would have gone and, especially knowing that acquaintances of ours were also about to sign with you, said: look, many of you feel that way... but once you’re in, you forget all the stress. And I promise you, we will do everything to make sure something good comes out of it." With that one sentence, they could have taken away all our doubts and basically helped us cross the finish line. Instead, there was a half outburst of anger and wild accusations. That just confirmed things for us all the more. Now we’re sitting here without a house, but also without debt, and we have stayed true to ourselves. What it was good for, we will see afterward.

I believe this shows the problem I have recently noticed.

One wants a transparent offer in order to have (cost) security before making the biggest investment of their life. This means a lot of preliminary work for the provider with the result that the contract may not be concluded. It is obvious that the motivation for this is rather low. But without this effort from the provider, I personally would not even reach the point where I can say yes or no.

So far, we have 2 offers that differ completely in their scope. If you combine both, you might have all the necessary information and a basis for decision-making.

I believe there can be plenty of reasons for both sides to complain if it simply doesn’t fit.