House purchase and house construction - What can we afford

Do you already have a plot of land?

Does it have to be a semi-detached house? Why not a custom-designed architect's house with your budget?
Before our first house build, we also visited a model home park to get a feel for houses and for what we like or don’t like. Many things were not included in the initial price estimates, and with our expressed special requests, the price quickly went up. In the end, we planned with an architect and had a general contractor carry out the work.

I would plan on about 4.xxx Euros per sqm for a new building. I don’t know anyone nowadays who has stayed below 3,700 Euros per sqm for a new building.

I think it's okay to rely on reputable brand providers when there is a very high level of uncertainty. Especially with Rentsch, I can well imagine that they could meet your requirements.

In the end, you can't avoid scrutinizing each individual trade and asking yourself: "What do I want"? It makes much more sense to first list all desired specifications than to rummage through the providers' construction/performance descriptions without a concept. As soon as you know what you want, you will very quickly notice who fits you and who does not.

I would rather recommend that you first go to an architect and create a proper floor plan. The architect then uses that to prepare a tender, and the companies make offers based on your requirements. This is a bit difficult, of course, if you are absolutely set on a large prefab house manufacturer, because they don’t necessarily participate. Carpenters and smaller prefab house providers are more likely to do so. And in solid construction, this is standard anyway. Maybe you could briefly explain again why it has to be a prefab house?

Masa? Or Massa Haus? Massa Haus is a shell construction company and can be found in the entry-level price segment.

Massa Haus, of course. Yes, that was a shell construction. But basically, that describes our problem quite well – you get 2 (I don’t want to call them offers) price indications that are completely different and vary greatly in scope. Many parts are then packed into some kind of "packages" that make it incredibly difficult to compare the pricing in any way.

We would do floors/walls painting ourselves (we have already done that ourselves or have people in the family who can do it) – but we would hand over more complex tasks.

We prefer prefab houses mainly because neither of us is a professional and we expect a bit more controllability with a quasi-standard product (and also hope for simpler assistance during acceptance by an expert or similar – who might also know the weaknesses of the individual providers). If we hand it over to a general contractor now, we have the same problem all over again, just on a different level.

We don’t have a plot yet but have already started to get familiar with 1 or 2 new development areas.

Hiring an architect and tackling the whole project with them (whether prefab or custom designed) would be a solution; still, we want to build up knowledge ourselves first. We are definitely still far from starting – the only thing we have so far is a financing framework, plus now we are actively increasing "more" reserves to build up equity (i.e., our goal would be to increase the available equity by another 10% within the year).

In addition, we are actively working on floor plans and already have various sketches of how we want the room layout (as an example, the often shown "bathroom with 2 doors" (towards the master bedroom and towards the hallway) is, for example, terrible in our opinion. But all in all, that’s just Sims+.

I think it's perfectly fine to rely on reputable brand providers when there is very high uncertainty. Especially with Rentsch, I can well imagine that they could meet your requirements.

Ultimately, you can't avoid examining each individual trade closely and asking yourself: "What do I want?" It makes much more sense to first list all desired specifications than to rummage aimlessly through the construction/performance descriptions of the providers. Once you know what you want, you'll quickly realize who fits you and who doesn't.

I think that describes our issues quite well. The apartment back then was comparatively easy to plan. The floor plan was basically predetermined, and you could choose the floor/light switches/whatever – a house not only increases the number of decisions but also the complexity of them manifold (we definitely underestimated that so far and now want to first build up our knowledge on our side).

Without land, this is a dream castle; you don’t even know yet what the land dictates to you according to the development plan. One or two floors, city villa, gable or hip roof, etc. You can only make a room plan for yourselves, for example, open space 50 sqm, bedroom 15 sqm, 2, 3, 4, 5 offices, children’s rooms, guest rooms, 2 bathrooms, etc. How you can plan this into the floors very much depends on the land.