Inherited equity, what to do, experiences?

We lived in Ratingen until early 2022. So we know your search radius quite well. And also the prices that were asked for (partly) run-down properties in southern Essen, Heiligenhaus, Velbert, and our area, and that were paid. That still has an effect today. However, the demand situation has changed massively. The value of unrenovated old properties decreases by the factor of modernization needs. That was all much more relaxed two years ago. But the sellers of 70s houses do (still) not want to realize that. Bernd got 600k for his house three years ago. My house is much nicer. I want 700k! No negotiation! The agents hear this and pull their hair out. I know several cases among friends and neighbors who currently don’t want to accept the situation. But in the long run, they won’t have any choice but to go down by several 100k. Don’t believe the fairy tales about queues of interested buyers for unrenovated properties.

But: given your situation, it doesn’t sound to me like you should buy an old building.

At some point, we decided on new construction. Exactly what we NEVER wanted. For us personally, building with a general contractor was the only option. In the end, it was the "evil" Town & Country. In short: the construction time was great! We approached it with a good dose of calmness. I myself professionally manage large IT projects and therefore never have a claim to perfectionism. Mistakes happen; it depends on how those involved handle them. My wife feels the same way. That helped a lot. But you should be interested and engage thoroughly with the topic. And then actively accompany the preparations and execution. That does not mean directing the mason’s trowel or questioning the mortar mixing ratio. (No joke – some builders see that as their duty to check.) But at least you should be aware of which things still need to be done on the side of the construction (ordering telecom, city’s civil engineering connections, ...). If you have the enthusiasm for that, it works. Of course, you should also get an independent building expert involved. By the way, he confirmed to us that the trades at Town & Country do just as good work as Viebrockhaus. That’s why I wouldn’t worry too much about the Heinz von Heiden house being bad just because it was built by Heinz von Heiden. Complete nonsense.

Topic end-terraced house from your picture: You have to trust your gut feeling. Does it bother you to be seen by several neighbors in the garden? The lawn area looks small/awkward. Do you maybe want to set up a pool/trampoline/play equipment? Do you want some feeling of freedom through the garden, or is as little garden work as possible important to you?

If the area is completely traffic-calmed and a playground is just around the corner, having your own garden is less important for the kids. But if you cannot let the kids outside without supervision, you might later be annoyed about the too-small area.

In the end, I said gut decisions. No one can take those away from you. Only offer points to consider.

Whether townhouse or detached house, no one can take that decision away from you. It is simply a matter of type and taste.

Family A has a detached house with a large garden, where the children also play; the "playground" nearby consists of a green area and a high-voltage mast standing on it. The mother is a total garden enthusiast and spends every free second in the garden, enjoying it well into old age. In summer, a garden party is held every other week, and during heat peaks, a pool is set up in the garden. They rarely take long vacations, enjoy growing fruit and vegetables communally in the garden, and process the harvest together.

Family B has a townhouse with a towel-sized garden; the children mostly play on the playground around the corner. The garden contains some green space and three shrubs that take care of themselves sufficiently. Once in spring, once per year there is a coffee-and-cake invitation, and once in autumn the lawn is mowed, which adds up to less than one hour of gardening per year. They go on relaxed vacations (nothing changes in the garden) and use the garden exclusively to sit in the sun lounger/Hollywood swing and enjoy the view of the small green area.

Both families are real, and both were and still are absolutely happy with their decision. Because it fits.

What I can definitely recommend is
1. taking advantage of and actually accepting unbiased advice from experts. Before building, I had very in-depth consultations with friends who are civil engineers and supply technicians about the current state of technology and the pros and cons of each option. I parted with many previously well-maintained prejudices—and I am very grateful for that.
2. equally consistent and professional construction supervision. Here in the settlement, someone configured and ordered a house almost entirely online and was very sad upon moving in because everything was as ordered but not as desired. I was on the construction site every day, spoke a lot and professionally with the tradespeople, always provided them with drinks and food, and lo and behold: everything was built exactly as desired.
3. For the fundamental decision, one simply has to experience such a house in my opinion. The big garden as well as the small garden, both when the neighbor four plots away is celebrating their 18th birthday and when the garden is screaming for work. The modern house with ventilation and all that, and the somewhat older house. I am glad to have experienced everything myself and then made an informed decision.

The problem is just that often you don’t know what type you are and unfortunately you can’t just try out both worlds for a few years. And as always in life, luck is quite underestimated. Sure, there can be a great community in the row house development and people you get along with very well. In any case, people in every new housing development all get along well in the first months and years. But that can change, here it does already after one year... People change, life situations change, houses get sold... suddenly it’s no longer the family next door living there, but a retired couple who want peace in the garden all day, etc. I know people who can’t have a conversation on their terrace in the row house because the neighbor is practically hanging with his ear on the fence and gossips everything. And I myself am really glad, with some neighbors here, that there are 20, 25 meters of air line between us and we don’t live door to door.

Two more points. 1. If the terraced house gardens are still unplanted, it really looks like you are looking onto the neighbor’s plate. Especially if you are not used to it, for example because you come from a detached house. From experience, this quickly grows over – of course, at every outer boundary you should not only think of the hedge but also factor in the space requirements for it. Corner plots are on the one hand good (you can build privacy screens on more sides, which is more difficult at the border to the next terraced middle house) but on the other hand bad (there is often only a small walkway left around the house). 2. At the moment, the market is really good for buyers. No hurry.

In the end, everyone has to decide that for themselves. And I also believe that many don't move into the terraced house voluntarily, but simply for financial reasons. However, if I have to "get used to something," that means I actually don't want it, but only slowly come to terms with it out of necessity. That doesn't sound like the house of dreams.

Greetings from the Ruhr area,

we work in Dortmund and Essen and have also looked around the area. Our project (semi-detached and terraced houses) is probably less suitable for you (we then oriented ourselves more towards Do and the connection to Essen is rather poor), but nevertheless, all the best with your search.

I also had a bit of the feeling in between that we now have to buy “quickly” so that the money doesn’t just “sit around” for too long. My father-in-law said somewhat brusquely the other day that we should finally take care of financing now because interest rates will continue to rise.

I would try not to stress about it too much. Actually, mortgage rates have been fluctuating around 3.5 - 4.1% or so for almost a year now (you can google the Interhyp interest rate chart), it’s of course possible that they might go a bit higher again, but so far I haven’t heard anyone fearing “and next week they are at 5%+.” I can’t predict the future, it’s also possible that they will rise slightly, and disasters unfortunately generally happen unexpectedly. but (warning, absolute layman opinion) I don’t currently see anything like March to Nov 22 (when rates rose from 1% to 4%) happening now (and as I said, we are still roughly at the same level as a year ago — so it didn’t keep rising continuously. Construction loan rates are generally much higher than e.g. ECB rates, which were only slowly adjusted later. Construction loan rates usually lead ECB rates and not vice versa, in case your father-in-law fears something like that). This is not financial advice, I just like looking at charts, especially since we financed exactly during the phase last year when rates rose significantly week by week. (that also caused some sweat). I understand that your father-in-law wants to be involved, especially if they are providing you a larger sum of money and don’t want to see it “wasted,” but pressure is usually a bad advisor. Maybe look for places where you can park the money short-term so that it yields some interest income but you can still access it if needed (nothing too volatile, nothing too long-term) but don’t stress too much that you need financing by tomorrow or something like that.

Whether it should be a terraced house, detached house, or an apartment you ultimately have to decide. We were already looking more toward new builds and then relatively quickly towards terraced houses from a developer (that’s more like “buying” and you have little to do with the construction itself). I’m currently checking if I find anything in my notes that might be interesting for you, but most of it is rather “not much has changed since last year....”. For example, we had the Bahnhofquartier Wattenscheid on our watchlist (I think especially Wilhelm-Leithe-Weg Süd?), where a development plan has just been published again, but there is absolutely no info on how it will be marketed and how it generally works (if there’s a big project developer or if parts also go directly to private buyers or whatever), so it’s probably also more in the “takes too long” category for you. On the “terraced house front” (you can tell we searched in that direction...) I still had the following on the list: The Deutsche Reihenhaus currently has a project in Herne (and we attended an info event for one in Bochum, but the timeline there is rather “a few years” and there’s nothing on the homepage yet), Bonava in Hattingen and I think Werner Wohnungsbau had something in Essen(?). I don’t know the current marketing status of these. We’re ending up in Castrop, where there are also two larger projects (project developers are once Vista/Dornrieden, and once Tecklenburg), but I assume that’s too far east for you, or the connection to Essen is too poor. I believe there were more here and there but I didn’t note them down anymore. I’m just throwing this out there in case something is interesting for you. Regarding old buildings and/or “completely building yourself,” I can’t really say anything; we had an eye open for that, but nothing suitable came up during the time we searched. Financially attractive, I think, were 1-2 things in Herne and/or Gelsenkirchen, where the connection to Essen wasn’t bad at all, but in the end, we settled elsewhere, and with something like that it really depends a lot on where exactly you need to be in Essen (e.g., if your work city is within walking distance of the main station, then neighboring cities are much more attractive than if you have to change trains 3 times first).