Is demolishing old buildings really that expensive?

Clearly too expensive or completely overpriced.

The work equipment can all be rented in Munich. In this respect, Polish or Czech demolition companies can also take over the job. If you have the construction debris transported there, you can easily afford that. The wood can be given away, as can the roof tiles. The masonry on site can be crushed with a mobile crusher and later reused. This provides the best recycled gravel.

So you are supposed to pay expensive disposal fees to the demolition company and then buy the gravel expensively again. That makes no sense for you!

With a little personal effort, the demolition can be done for 10k. You can also rent an excavator with a driver. In any case, not much residual waste remains from the old house. Usually, houses were already solidly built in the 50s.

We demolished a house from the 50s in 2021. Approximately 110sqm of living space over two floors including basement. Location: Niedersachsen. We paid nearly €20,000 (including the felling of an old sick tree). It was not the cheapest offer. Preparing the ground, i.e., backfilling and compaction, then also cost about €40,000.

Thank you all already for the many responses. So I actually have two offers since today. Although the new one is unfortunately completely unreliable (without inspection, they just quoted 50k). Both offers are also very simple and have hardly any details (only one page long). Of course, I have not done a professional tender. Is that necessary or is the key point that you look for companies that are further away? One person also told me (though he has not submitted an offer yet, let's see what comes): He wanted to first do an expert report after the contract is signed for about 1000€, to check if, for example, there are any contaminants in the parquet adhesive in the floors or something like that. He also said that there is currently a legislative process underway that would lead to the "builder" being obligated to do this. It's a bit strange, especially since the upper floor was renovated only about 15 years ago (new floors, new bathrooms) and also in the ground floor it looks like there is parquet that is not exactly ancient. Others have said nothing about that.

Unfortunately, I can no longer edit the old post: The "hole" actually must be filled because we cannot build in the same spot. So the basement definitely cannot be reused either. Could the filling perhaps be the cost driver when I read that on akanzezumi?

I can't really imagine that. Currently, driving away is actually significantly more expensive than hauling away. But I'm also not sure how it is with [Verfüllen], presumably you wouldn't fill it up with topsoil or something similar? But you should be able to "generate" even the gravel yourselves from the demolition.

Backfilling depends on what will be placed on top later. If there is only a garden and settlements don’t matter, you can simply backfill with any kind of excavated material that people are happy to give away. If later a driveway, etc. will be placed on top, you probably have to fill with compactable material and that will be expensive. A little comes up during demolition, but that definitely won’t be enough. Delivering gravel is expensive.