House construction planning: solid house or prefabricated house? With or without a basement?

Well then, let's get started and fill out the questionnaire.

Which questionnaire?

I spontaneously signed up here because I was looking for house building forums to even find a common thread.

You really seem to be just at the very beginning. In Saxony-Anhalt, it makes sense to start with maybe 2500€/sqm of living space and then see how many sqm are actually possible. And also how much money is left for a plot of land – are there plots available in your region? Are they affordable? Read in the forum about the incidental building costs ([Baunebenkosten]), those are quite a lot as well.

120sqm apartment is too small? In a house, there is also the utility room and the staircase, both of which take up living space. But to immediately assume 200-300sqm is completely opposite to "watching the budget," unless it is a budget adjusted to Merz's middle class.

From FertighausWelt, there are show home parks in Hannover, Erfurt, Leipzig, Berlin. Surely at least one of these can be reached by train or car from the Harz.

There are builders who basically build without a budget. But this impression is not created by the above introductory sentence. It stands in stark! contrast to the rest (wishes). Set the budget and state it, describe your family situation, room wishes according to function (e.g. study for home office). And also more info in general. Then advice will work out ;)

As for the budget, we are at an absolute maximum of €600,000. However, reserves are also included in this amount. We want a large dining, cooking, and living area, 2 studies, 1 guest room with a separate bathroom, and a bedroom with a walk-in closet and a large shower and bathtub bathroom.

The house’s technical room must necessarily be 20-25 sqm, therefore preferably located in the basement. Power generation – heat generation should run via HPS Picea and a ventilation system and underfloor heating (Picea and ventilation system take up a lot of space + control cabinet and 2-3 server cabinets).

The heating and ventilation including energy system (hydrogen/solar-based) already takes up around €100,000-110,000 without the pipes for underfloor heating but with a finished ventilation system. In case the question comes up, Picea is a system that guarantees 100% autarkic power production, and you no longer need a grid connection for electricity here. Although it should be installed in the house for safety, it will not be connected.

Family situation: only 2 persons, married, and there will be no children, so we do not need children’s rooms. (Don’t worry, we are child-friendly, but we do not feel capable of raising children because 1. we would have to adopt / the maximum age is likely already exceeded in about 5 years “35 years” and we would not adopt children unless we had the urgent desire ourselves and because of work we would also have to make compromises somewhere, which we do not want. And since we don’t want to be bad parents, we simply prefer not to.) Apart from that, children also cost money, and since 2 offices are needed in the house and fundamentally, even if it sounds exaggerated, we need a lot of space for ourselves, this is simply not an option.

The house can best have the style of a city villa. As far as we know, a bungalow is more expensive than a multi-story house. Basement, ground floor, and upper floor are okay. (The basement should cost around €30,000, according to what we have read; moreover, the gained space here is considerable and would offer enormous added value for technology and storage space.) Where in the ground floor the technical room is normally located in house builders’ plans, we want a garage inside the house so that we can get in or out by car directly inside or next to the house without having to go outside.

The land prices here in Halberstadt in the Harz are around €30,000 per 1000-13,000 sqm.

What might also play a role: We want to design the stairwell for old age so that an elevator or stairlift can be installed without problems because of the floors.

Phew, I hope I could provide you with enough info ^^

Above the matter hovers an unmistakable "forget it" regarding the wishes and the budget.

You really seem to be just at the very beginning. In Saxony-Anhalt, it makes sense to assume maybe 2500€/sqm of living space and then see how many sqm are actually possible. And also how much money is left for a plot of land – are there plots available in your region? Are they affordable? Read in the forum about the ancillary building costs (Baunebenkosten), those are quite a lot as well. 120sqm apartment too small? In a house, there is also the utility room and the stairs, which both take up living space. But to immediately assume 200-300sqm is completely contrary to "watching the budget," unless it is a budget adjusted to Merz's middle class. FertighausWelt has model home parks in Hanover, Erfurt, Leipzig, Berlin. Surely one of those is reachable by train or car from the Harz.

Okay, that is already a great calculation example.

So, as I wrote in the last post before reading your message, plots here are rather negligible in price. Sometimes they are even free here if you commit to building on them within 3 years and moving in yourself, and not renting them out. The binding period is then 30 years except in case of death. This mostly applies to the surrounding villages. In the city, in new development areas, you roughly pay around 30-50,000 euros over the thumb.

So luckily situated compared to Munich and co ^^

120sqm too small... Yes, I know it might sound strange to some. On the one hand, we don’t like small rooms but rather space and freedom. Especially in the living area, it should be spacious. (We live more withdrawn and have very little contact, just a small family circle, and our friends are limited to 2 other couples we keep in touch with. So this won't be a house we show off with somewhere, but only want to cover our needs.)

Minus the heating-electric system 100,000€ and 100,000€ which we want to keep on the side for ancillary building costs, theoretically we have 400,000€ left for house construction. But all that is very rough. We are financially not so bad now, but of course, we don’t want to go overboard and build a palace. There can be space for us though.

Why should the technical room be so big? Because we want a fully equipped smart home. So with KNX bus technology and 3 server cabinets because: audio, video, network, private cloud (so absolutely no online clouds), video surveillance technology, everything should go through the technical room. We like it absolutely clean. No cabinets in the room (only built-in furniture except the bed and nightstand, no single cabinet should stand in the room). That means TVs and speakers should disappear in or on walls and ceilings and not form dust monsters.

I know that also sounds strange to some.

We are also aware that we are unusual. No children, obsession with order, craving for space. But for us, that is exactly satisfaction itself. We are certainly not old hermits. But we like to be withdrawn and therefore have only very few contacts. So we are quite content without seeing anyone else. That has many reasons from the past (just by the way).

By watching the budget, we mean that we do not want to build a palace with all sorts of luxury fittings, and we do not want to live beyond our means, so no exaggeration.

Regarding the 200-300 sqm, we also meant that this relates to 3 floors and we have no exact idea how much exactly we would have to calculate there. If I take our current apartment with 120 sqm as a basis, we would like twice as much space, and then there is the technical room and garage and storage space added. So that comes to the idea of the area.

But since no one has really built a house among us and my parents have always lived in a house (multi-generation house), we have to find another way.

I hope we don't come across as too unpleasant. We are just trying to find the red thread where we should really start.

We know ourselves that we are quite special.

And this forum is practically the first attempt to somehow sort things out.

We have already dealt an incredible amount with the technology of the house. So energy generation and heating and smart home (we already have that) and generally with houses and the appearance and floor plans. But for now, all that is just info that overwhelms with volume.

The mentioned places with prefabricated houses are initially too far away for us since, as mentioned, we do not particularly like to go out. Sure, it is possible and would be doable. But for us, that's not really nearby if you leave the apartment only for the really necessary.

That does not mean we won’t approach it. Only, unfortunately, there’s nothing in the closer area, at least we haven’t found anything yet.

Oh man, now we probably sound really strange.

There is an almost unmistakable "forget it" hovering over the matter regarding the wishes and the budget.

What exactly is that referring to? ^^