Is a basement in a single-family house useful or rather too expensive?

Yes, that's true. The rental and purchase price level in Munich is really crazy. But you don't have to live in Munich. And I also find the purchase price level elsewhere nowadays to be crazy. It certainly has a lot to do with the Euro and refugee crisis. Because of the Euro crisis, many people are trying to secure their money in Germany. And the refugees and poverty migrants also need housing. That of course drives the prices up. The financial crisis, on the other hand, has caused many people to want to invest their money in real estate and at the same time it has massively lowered interest rates, which also pushes prices up.

In the past, when you thought of a million, you always imagined a small villa with a pool.

Today there is a "town villa" for that and an inflatable pool, but no basement...

Munich was once again chosen as the most livable city in the world....

As stupid as it sounds: not everyone can afford to live there, and not everyone can drive a Porsche....

But if entire professions can no longer afford a city, the city will eventually have a problem. Especially because the lower-paid jobs are practically available everywhere, I wouldn’t put up with hours of commuting. And then the city simply has no garbage collection, no supermarkets, no hospitals, and no daycares anymore. Tough luck.

As I said, I understand the "injustice" of the whole thing, but in cities like London, unfortunately, it has been like that for a long time....

Those who work in social professions commute there daily for at least 2 hours....

Tiring discussion, which has already taken place more than once. It's like with many things. There is no single answer. Why? Because both the framework conditions and the needs are different. From my point of view, the question cannot be answered fundamentally but only individually.

We will build with a basement. Why? Because we need/want storage space and additional areas. Space for tinkering/workshop. It adds up what you have to store with children, at least for us. Many things that have already been described here and also stuff like the grocery store built by the grandfather himself, which is passed on to the second generation and with which the children like to play, travel luggage, the older child's bike that the younger child will ride when the time comes, children's clothes, winter clothes, etc. Now the question is where I store all that. And that’s where the framework conditions come into play. We bought a plot with 430 sqm. Because where we are, you can't just pick one easily and you have to be glad if you get one at all, and with plot prices of at least 300€ upwards, every sqm more costs a lot of money. If I now do it as often suggested here, then I have to make our garage 30 sqm bigger and the house itself must also get more area and I have to plan an attic that we are currently doing without. Apart from the fact that this is not free either, it would simply steal space on the plot, which unfortunately is not that big anyway. One could now say, then you should have bought a bigger plot... sure, but as said, first you have to get one at all and then you should also do the math, because the additional sqm also cost a lot.

From our perspective, it is therefore simply the case that a basement makes more sense for us. Sure, it costs money. But if you weigh what costs I would have if I build without a basement, you find in our case that the additional costs are relativized but we get a lot of usable space and even room that can be expanded into living space and we do not have to build out our modest plot.

If we had a 700 sqm plot because we would not have to pay over 300€ per sqm, we might also build without a basement.

By the way, the new development area in which we are building has 10 building plots, all similar in size, all the same sqm price, 8 are building with basements as things stand now.