House construction costs in 2024, 2025, or not at all?

Difficult situation. For you, the desire to have children will roughly coincide with the house construction. You will lack money in the critical phase to cover unexpected additional costs, plus stress from both happening at the same time. Your own work efforts are also rather limited and you need tons of things you didn’t expect before.

Two years ago, it would have been relatively feasible, now I am skeptical. With a loan of around 500k, I wouldn’t plan on a rate under €2500 and that is too much. And practically without equity would be too risky for me as well. We will probably exceed our planned buffer and I am glad that I still have additional reserves. Additionally, reserves for unlucky moments should be available, a car accident can happen quickly.

Thank you all - basically, I currently share exactly your opinion, but I just wanted to hear more opinions. At the moment, neither of us dares to manage a rate of > 2,000 €, let alone that we would even get a loan from a bank for that right now.

My current plan is actually only to, in the next 1-3 years

[*]repay as much as possible of the land loan
[*]drastically increase the savings rate
[*]stop unnecessary expenses/optimize general expenses.

In the best case, we would then have a fully paid off piece of land in 2025, significantly higher equity and a household net income in the range of 6,000 €. And only then does it, I think, make sense to deal with the topic again. :)

Difficult matter. For you, the desire to have children will roughly coincide with the house construction. You'll lack money in the critical phase to cover unexpected additional costs, plus the stress of both combined. Your own work contributions are also rather limited, and you need dozens of things you hadn't counted on before.

Two years ago, that would have been relatively doable, now I'm skeptical. With a loan of around 500k, I wouldn't plan a rate below €2,500, and that's too much. And practically without equity, that would also be too risky for me. We will probably exceed our planned buffer, and I'm glad I still have additional reserves. Additionally, reserves for bad luck moments should be available too; a car accident can happen quickly.

Definitely... same for us. We first built up a good cushion of equity again for 2-3 years to simply absorb those unexpected additional costs. Then, due to parental leave, one salary will be lost. Then maybe, as a dad, you’d also want to stay at home at the same time? These are all factors where you sometimes live off your savings for a month or so.

Therefore, I would recommend building up a lot of equity (obviously not throwing everything into the financing) and then looking at the current situation again in 2 years to check if it’s feasible or not.

We have a loan of 550k and a rate of €2,050 (at 1% interest). Currently, you’re easily at €2,500. That’s really no joke anymore...

Currently, neither of us dares to manage a rate of > 2,000 €, let alone that we would currently even get a loan from a bank for this.

I would possibly try, as of today, to simulate it as best as possible and carry it through for the next 2 years or so. So basically something like "we put aside 1,700 euros every month for a house (land or something for the house)" and then see how well that works. Aka do we have to or want to stick to that currently because otherwise there is no buffer, or is it actually okay? Otherwise, I would personally just start looking around in the direction of how much that would cost, what you want. What do you even want. Etc. I have to say that with us there were quite quickly still 1-2 professional changes that then made things possible much earlier than we had previously thought. Aka, sometimes it goes faster than you think. And even if not, "we want to build in 2024 or 25" is not that far away :) (our municipality is also notorious for "we also sometimes need a year for a building permit")

In the best case, we would then have a fully paid-off plot in 2025,

Can you really wait that long to start construction? Is there no obligation to build by a specific deadline?

Can you even wait that long to build? Is there no obligation to build by a specific deadline?

Fortunately, yes. See the last paragraph in my original post: "... all the other eight plots were temporarily reserved in mid/end 2022 but were not taken by the interested builders - primarily due to the interest rates & construction costs. For us, this also means something good: The municipality is waiving the contractually stipulated building deadline with a completion in June 2027 (shell construction June 2025) and allows us to 'overrun' by at least 3 years. We already have this in writing and a representative of the municipality recently told me that they had imagined it differently and had assumed that all plots would be definitely sold by the end of 2022."