Needs Planning for Home Financing

Hello, we have just met with an architect for the first time to narrow down our planned house build in an initial step, and so far we have agreed on the following basics, although of course not all details have been clarified yet. This is roughly what we envision:

Region BB / 2 floors, 4 living and bedrooms, no basement, energy standard Gebäudeenergiegesetz, solid exterior wall Ytong, facade fine plaster (standard), 250 room height (standard), interior plaster quality Q2 (standard), chimney without (standard), no bay window, no balcony, no terrace, garage stone on stone 6x4 m

He has estimated a preliminary total sum of €293,250; we absolutely cannot exceed €350k. How much equity is required for financing from the bank’s side? Is 20% still applicable here? Who is already a step further in the planning?

As an estimated preliminary total, he calculates €293,250, we definitely cannot go over €350k.

Do you already have a plot of land? And is it paid for?

I believe less than €300k will definitely be tight, no matter where you want to build, even if we only talk about the house without the land.

The 20% is no longer set in stone today, but it would be considered healthy. It also depends on your income and household expenses.

Well, you will have to reduce to the bare essentials. But there is really no wish in it at all and only minimal equipment. If at all. Are the 350k including additional construction costs such as earthworks, etc.?

The square meter number is missing. They calculate with 3k/sqm + additional construction costs (50k). I think it will be tight.

if BB means Böblingen you can expect around 4000.--€/m², if it means Brandenburg it will probably be cheaper. When the interest rates were 1% and lower, financing was also possible without equity. For a new build, 20% would be too little for me, due to cost increases and monthly payments

Wow, 350k total budget? What all needs to be paid from that? I'll put it this way... My ex and I built in 2019/2020 and ended up at about that value with what we had already done on the outside. That was of course including the plot (which is almost negligible because including purchase incidental costs it would be under 30k€), ancillary costs, and kitchen, but: We had built with Town & Country and mostly stayed within the standard. The plot wasn’t quite flat but also not complicated to build on. For the outside area, up to that sum we had only gravelled everything that was supposed to be terrace and entrance area and built a large roof with concrete pillars, which was probably even cheaper than many carports because we did a lot ourselves. That means: 3-4 years ago it was doable as long as you were fine without much luxury and did some of the work yourself and left the outside initially unfinished. Today, honestly, I wouldn’t even consider a house under 400k. I took the liberty to check what Town & Country wants here now for the same house. That is now about 120k more than back then with us... Yes, some things are now standard that we paid extra for, but that by far does not make up the price difference, because overall we did not pay for the services from Town & Country at that time what today is the base price without the slightest upgrades.