House construction costs, how were they for you?

But here it is somehow portrayed as if every office jockey can manage this just by reducing their hours and doing everything themselves. What is completely overlooked is that many tasks on the construction site require immense expertise.
I find it almost negligent to suggest to young, perhaps low-income, construction families that "you can do all this yourselves." They then incur debts with these amounts for their entire lives, possibly overestimate their abilities, and end up financially facing a botched mess.

I don’t think it was portrayed that way. It was shown once that it works if you want to and have some manual skills. Everyone has to assess for themselves what they are capable of. After all, these are all adults here.
And yes, some things require expertise. But you can already see what you can save in electrical work without any expertise. Anyone can chase cable channels and lay cables in them. This applies to all trades. Our general contractor, for example, said that some people only have the first row of masonry done during the shell construction and then do the rest themselves with adhesive. You don’t need expertise for that.
And this runs through the entire construction process.

It is simply a pleasant counterpoint to the recurring statements that even the exterior facilities have to cost 50,000 euros and warnings are given already before laying the flooring or painting.

These are just extreme representations. But the statement that you can continue gluing the stones yourself after the first row is at least bold. I would never come up with that idea. Fortunately, everyone can do as they think. But I see it similarly to floor plans. Everyone also thinks, "I can do architect work myself." You can do it, but then it's just stupid.

For painting or flooring work, I still see the personal effort as acceptable, simply because it's also a trade that is on the top/outside, and you can redo it if it doesn't turn out well. But I wouldn't even want to try that with the shell construction. We're no longer in the '70s, especially considering today's requirements for thermal insulation... I just can't imagine that all of this is just a rip-off and that every Tom, Dick, and Harry could build their house 80% themselves.

You probably like to have the same discussion, dear OP. In other forums, you also hear that you are "abnormal" and on top of that live in the middle of nowhere.

To start a price comparison with the motto - What did your car cost? - without any comparability, since every property is individual, every location (slope, foundation, etc.) is different, and 99% of all self-builders do not build their house themselves, is absolute nonsense.
Maybe you feel good about how great and cheap you built and have to spread that all over the internet. Unfortunately, that doesn’t help at all.

Normal construction costs start at €2,500 per sqm, usually currently higher. With normal own contributions, money can be saved. But then we are only talking about a few hundred euros per sqm.

It is completely overlooked that immense expertise is required for many tasks in construction.

Exactly. Because here the amount of working hours is also missing. An owner-builder also has "compensation" on paper.

But the statement that you can continue laying the bricks yourself after the first row is at least daring. I would never come up with that idea.

These are, for example, Ytong kit houses. They are supervised. There, the DIYer can build the house themselves. Our neighbor did that. Unfortunately, he never finished (terrace, brick slips around the windows, etc. were missing among other things). As a result, the house itself (also because of DIY) had no high value and was sold very cheaply.

I can't really comment on the prices because we built before 2020.

But some things are missing? Don't you have any Dachrinnen or anything? Where does your Regenwasser go? The Sicherungskasten already costs 2000€? The chimney was already three times the price for us in 2013, okay also twice as high/long ;) ... And instead of flooring, you spent the money on the fancy fingerprint system and fireplace?

That's how it is. I think it's good if even lower income earners can afford their own home if they want to, but there are also some downsides for you here, at least the mentioned location (AdW). If you or you guys can't just do HO, some of the savings on building the house will be eaten up again by future commuting costs. That can get difficult sometimes given the salary levels. Such calculations are no longer discussed then.

You would also have to add your hours of EL to the calculation...

Dachrinnen: in the post "Baustoffe" Just like the Sicherungskasten. (yes, should have made a separate post for electrical) The Regenwasser flows into the cistern (5000L) and overflow into the soakaway (infiltration) The chimney, we have "only" attached a stainless steel one on the outside...

"And instead of flooring you bought the fancy fingerprint system and fireplace?" Where did you get THAT about the flooring??? Of course, we have flooring installed throughout the whole house And yes, of course with a fireplace. That's a great thing and a nicer warmth than the heating, with atmosphere And so far we are still heating with it for free

And yes, we have to drive a bit more for this or that than in the city. But for the same plot size in the next small town, we would have had to pay over 100-150k € more and would no longer have been able to afford the house there. So I’d rather drive a few kilometers more (our jobs are within approx. 10 km, business about 2 km, kindergarten right here, primary school 300 m, secondary school 2.5 km = so everything is well accessible)

So we are at just under 2k/sqm WITHOUT land and additional building costs and had everything done except for painting ... painting was done by a painter from the family and therefore only cost material ... The contract was from 04/21 and we would certainly have stayed well below that if we hadn’t gone so overboard with the plumbing :-D

And we also didn’t install the worst junk and a few small nice gimmicks like e.g. aluminum door with fingerprint, two-tone aluminum windows, geothermal system, silicone plaster outside ...

but ... we really don’t live exactly in an exclusive location :-) ... although 20km to the state capital is, in my opinion, not yet AdW :-p

With Intel settling here, this will definitely change a lot again :-/