How many square meters are possible for KFW40 turnkey with a budget of 150,000€?

The aforementioned massiv team haus is, to my knowledge, not built in NRW. And yes, it is inexpensive, yes, the price is fair, but it is also true that the standard is very low. No one gets away without upgrades, and without extras like underfloor heating either.

I see the issue of own contribution quite differently as well. You can’t seriously calculate with 12 euros per hour. Maybe the subordinate gets 12 euros from his boss, but you pay 40-50 euros net plus tax.

We saved over 100,000 € through EL. The effort was about 1000 hours from family/friends and about 2500 hours from my partner and me.

But you can’t measure your work performance against that of a skilled worker, so that also applies to the wage. 3,500 hours amount to at least 2 working years for one person. How long did you build? For trades worth allegedly 100,000 euros plus material, you have no warranty, is that sensible? Are there subsequent trades that have taken warranty for your preliminary work? I imagine a final acceptance (if built with a general contractor) is also "funny" in this constellation. Not everything that limps is a comparison.

That's how it is, the craftsman gets 12 euros, but the real hourly wage at a normal construction company is around 35 euros per hour, which the construction company has to calculate with.

However, they build much faster than the DIYer doing it themselves. Therefore, you have to calculate the hours a professional would need, not yourself.

You can't compare your work performance to that of a skilled worker, so this also applies to the wage

In the end, it’s not the hours that matter (unless, of course, you are self-employed or a freelancer or something and could earn more in that time), but the difference between the total offer minus the materials and tools that you have to buy or rent.

The difference is the unpaid labor for which no hard cash has to flow. If it takes longer, it doesn’t hurt the bank account.

An example: we sanded and oiled about 100 sqm of parquet. Materials and rental fees were about 850€. Offers for having it done ranged between 25-30€ per sqm. So we would have had to pay 2500-3000€.

But it also took us 4.5 days (at 38 degrees outside).

What I like about unpaid labor is that I get to do something you can see or touch.

You can't compare your work performance to that of a skilled worker, so that also applies to the wages. 3,500 hours amount to at least 2 working years for one person. How long did you actually build? For trades worth supposedly 100,000 euros plus materials, you have no warranty—is that sensible? Are there subsequent trades that have taken over warranty for your preliminary work? I imagine the final acceptance (if built with a general contractor) would also be "fun" in this scenario. Not every comparison that limps is a valid comparison.

It’s clear that the skilled worker would have been faster. But that doesn’t matter. I have done the work and on top of that handled my 38 hours/week job, in which I don’t have the chance to do overtime or similar. So the time I spent doesn’t hurt me.

We have built for exactly 12 months so far. Exterior landscaping is completely missing and one children's room is not finished yet (wallpaper + painting missing).

The only follow-up trades that had to/could take over warranty were the tilers and exterior plasterers, and they did. The rest was done by ourselves anyway.
For every trade, we always had a professional there occasionally who looked over the whole thing or even supervised it. In addition, the architect (also family) visited weekly and checked everything.

And honestly: The way it is often described here in the forum (zero own contribution because "I can’t", "no time" or "not worth it"), only 1 out of 100 houses in our rural area is built that way. If you talk to the builders here, all of them have only 1-3 companies working on their site and do the rest themselves. People still help each other here.

Back to the 3,500 hours: Sometimes we had 8 unpaid workers (friends/family) on site on Saturdays + ourselves. On the Saturday when the roof was covered, there were 19 people.
By the way, the entire site catering is not included in these hours. That was completely taken care of by my mother + grandmother who live right next door.

I can now say that we built the house ourselves. And you think about that every day at the moment and are very proud. The time was tough, no question. But it was a very beautiful time nonetheless.

It is the same with us. We are almost exotic with our turnkey house. Many only have a shell construction built, and not even by one company, but hire 2-3 bricklayers. They all know each other very well here in the village, so that doesn’t seem to be a problem. That also explains why there are so many large houses with 200sqm+ here.