Must the construction company itemize the costs per trade?

In hindsight, you are always in a worse position. [Ggfl] your house was too cheap before (?) and now a surcharge is added. We do not know.

Hi,
with the change you’ve opened quite a can of worms, probably without realizing it:

[*]The house becomes structurally much more complicated. Since the walls on the upper floor are now 1 m away from the walls on the ground floor, you will probably have concrete columns in the corners of the bay window and a significantly thicker ground floor ceiling. We have a similar construction; our ground floor ceiling is a slender 28 cm, only concrete! That alone requires a lot of material. I wasn’t aware of this before either, but it would probably have been much cheaper to include the "bay window" in the upper floor so that all exterior walls line up again.
[*]The roof on the "bay window" is now twice as large and therefore twice as expensive.
[*]You write "building soon"; if the execution plans were already finished, that is a lot of plans that he has to change and redistribute. That alone can easily cost a few thousand for manpower.

So this will be pretty expensive living space, it won’t come for the usual 2000 €/sqm. 3000 €/sqm is certainly reasonable, whether it really has to be 4000 €/sqm is another question.

But: you have probably already signed, so now you are at the mercy of the general contractor. For what reason should he do it at cost price for you?

Unfortunately, you only have exactly one choice: take it or leave it!

That’s just how it is in project business; the actual contract still has to be calculated tightly, you make the money with the change requests.

What you can do is kindly ask him to explain where the additional costs come from. If he’s smart, he’ll do that in a way that doesn’t make you feel like you’re being ripped off. Then you’ll be reassured again and ready to put another 12,000 € on the table for the next change...

Best regards and good luck,

Andreas

Hello everyone,

thanks in advance for the answers.

I was already aware that the floor slabs and ground floor ceiling would be larger. But the price is really extremely high. Because only "3m²" more will be added. It is also clear that we won't get more living space in the upper floor because of this, but it should look good from the outside and it looks significantly better than before.

That's it, we don't want to ruin the ratio either. So far, it was just perfect and now comes the unpleasant surprise. As I said, I already had to prove that he miscalculated, but I can't just tell him like that. He also tried to explain to me which trades are involved, but I can roughly estimate it too and just can't understand it.

The house is not cheap, we obtained many offers and this was one of the more expensive ones. They also call themselves premium houses.

I am probably really at the mercy of the situation and have no other choice. Bringing the upper floor forward is also out of the question, otherwise, the entire upper floor would have to be redesigned and the effect would be lost. We had that idea before signing the contract, but we also wanted to enlarge the ground floor by one meter downwards. He said that would be way too expensive and advised us against it. When we then proposed this plan months later, he said "yes of course, that's possible, with the bay window it works too."

I wouldn't have complained, BUT what bothers me is the following. In the contract finalization plan, the company did not consider the usable area under the stairs, which is about 4m². I never specifically asked about it because you don't know much at the beginning. This usable area only came to light during the execution planning. When he then explained the costs to me, he said that the usable area increased by 7m². But it is actually only 2.9m² because the usable area under the stairs was always there. I tried to explain that to him, but he blocked it and said the system calculates it automatically and he also recalculated it. I suspect he also included the about 4m² usable area in the calculation. That is what makes me suspicious.

Now we have extended the bay window down to the lower edge of the house to 6 meters. Thus, the walls on the upper floor no longer stand on the lower walls in the basement. That added 2.9 m² more living space and the construction company wants 11,800 EUR more for it.

No, they want this super-duper friendship price because you made a special request that falls into the category "punishment for someone who has killed father and mother," as explained in this post

Hi, with the change you have opened quite a big can of worms,

as explained, which I would not have done better myself. To comment on it with the words

I am probably really at their mercy

is already brazenly ungrateful. Always these princesses who want a fine dust unicorn extra square meter for the price of a donkey standard square meter.

I don't know what the topic has to do with princesses and unicorns, but thank you very much for this constructive answer!!!

I don’t know what this topic has to do with princesses and unicorns,

The house itself is a completely normal button mushroom, and so is its price per square meter. However, the square meter of bay window modification has, just because of the little structural farts it comes with, a truffle price on the purchase side – you can’t have it sold to you any cheaper. Even expecting to apply the usual mass price of the rest of the house to it is unbelievably brazen pony-farm romanticism, as only found in the current, unique generation of builders of the type “enlightened consumers who really question the very first thing.” King Customer simply has no manners today. You say “thank you” when you get such a special wish gifted at eightfold price, and don’t complain that you can’t understand it. Of course you can’t, the price is g-i-f-t-e-d. And just because it was the weekend and I was offline, you didn’t get that explained by me, but by and therefore with the presumption of innocence

probably without you realizing it:

which wouldn’t exist with me for such things. Somewhere, there simply has to be an end to the felt legal entitlement to naivety, I think.