New construction or house purchase and renovation in Bavaria

It is time for you to make your own experiences and at least when building a house no longer listen to the old-school generation.

Thanks for your answers. Unfortunately, my husband is very strict about taking out a loan, I need to discuss this with him again.

The best argument in financial discussions is money. Without a loan, there is also no place for repayment subsidies – even a man understands this logic. In your enviable situation (550k easily manageable without asking anyone, building plot for free) your own stupidity is almost the only way to damage your economic strength.

The lady is an architect (FH), I don’t know if I am allowed to mention names? I found the website and the references nice, how the chemistry then works out in a direct conversation is, of course, open.

You may definitely name her to me, you know the way now. “FH” is positive: it means that she most likely owes her university entrance qualification to a specialized secondary school diploma – so she will have completed a non-academic vocational training before studying. Practitioners usually know better “what butter costs in Hamburg.”

I can of course also name the open construction companies on my list, even if they are most likely not known nationwide.

You can try entering the names in the forum search to see if they have already been mentioned in the “experiences with construction companies” section.

Of course, new builds are initially more expensive, but everything is new and you have the latest standard. Bringing an old house up to a somewhat comparable standard results at best in a stripped shell, but then there is not much room for own contribution as with a superficial renovation.

This sounds to me like a contradiction to your words earlier in the same post...

I believe there are hardly any house constructions that stay within budget. Renovations are also very rarely on budget. And with house building, from my impression, the builders mostly bear a certain share of the blame, either through insufficient preparations (poor soil, underestimated slope, low general contractor standards, etc.), lack of discipline in selecting fittings, or spontaneous upgrades (for example, the terrace roof in our case). Whether at the end a faceless shoebox or a beautiful house emerges depends mainly on the builder.

... and in practice it really is like this:
Renovations go off the rails especially in the old building section, where unlike in the extension there are no more shell trades, so the party practically starts with the finishing trades, and everything has to be connected / pieced together from the existing structure. Here, it’s not “Schmalhans Küchenmeister” (a German phrase meaning “there is little available”), but rather “Hans im Glück” (Hans in Luck). Everything stands or falls with the quality of the call for tenders / quantity and mass determination, and hourly costs “are king.” As architects, you need old hands here, otherwise you can permanently set the Gerddieter warning lamp to steady light. My old master was such a one – that’s why I know that old building and staying on budget do not necessarily exclude each other. By the way, we also have one in this forum, although in NRW, eternally far away from Bavaria.
An old building is only cheaper if you “enjoy it with caution,” i.e. if you are content to rejuvenate a forty-year-old house to a condition of about twenty to fifteen years ago. One “knows” this basically from Pareto: the last twenty percent of the age difference to a new build is where the price parity threshold is exceeded. If you take a bigger remaining gap after the renovation result, the old building is cheaper. Generally – but especially technically – every further “time machine year” gets disproportionately more expensive. That’s why it is so popular with investors to only adapt buildings optically to modern times.

I would say you first have to agree with your husband regarding the loan. A newly built house lasts for many decades; if you take out a loan for anything, then for that. You two should agree on that.
Then the land needs to be secured so that you can do whatever you want with it. Without any kinship clauses in the land register but simply: your land.

A round of applause for your entire post, but I had to quote this paragraph again in full ;-)

Then proceed according to 11ant’s plan. Aim for moving in two years – if it’s sooner, great.

By the way, the “House Building Schedule reloaded” specifically on the topic of deviations from the scheme will be published in the next few weeks – thanks to everyone who wished for this continuation!

Accordingly, we were only told horror stories there, that costs run away, the architect exploits you, with a new build you can only build a shoebox, etc. etc. Where these stories without experience come from I do not quite know now. ;-)

I have here – also to be found if you search my posts for the keyword Gerddieter – explained in detail how you (in new builds, but it would be similar for old buildings) get the type of architects who don’t (want to) understand budget compliance.

You are basically right, I see the problem somewhere else. Just put yourself in the husband or partner's shoes. You do not contribute to the family's maintenance. You are not able to perform any personal work. And you cannot make any contribution to repaying a loan. Please do not misunderstand, the work of a housewife/househusband cannot be valued highly enough.

Yes, of course it is unusual to take out a loan for a six-figure amount for the first time – and to be honest, I am GLAD that there are still people who think first and then spend money. I have lived my entire life by the maxim "I only buy things that I want myself with money that I have myself" – but with a house, it definitely looks different. Then we sat at the building society, interest rates had just gone up again, and he said "since this week we have 1,x% interest, but if you sign now, I can still register 0.9% interest for last week" – and although we already had a multi-year thought process and many bank appointments behind us and basically everything was clear, it was still a major step to say: Yes, I will take out this loan now. You also have to explain a lot, for example: the home loan is a very privileged loan. I get interest rates so low that you can almost consider financing the entire house and investing the equity elsewhere. You also get many subsidies for home construction, the repayment grants have already been mentioned. So: even for people who (commendably!) generally have an aversion to loans, a home loan is absolutely okay. It is also important, and that is why I mentioned the land so clearly as the first step: sometimes, with gifts, the donors come up at the last second with very quirky clauses that completely destroy the overall structure. For example, I experienced that the gifting mother insisted the day before the notary appointment that a clause had to be entered in the land register stating that the land may only be sold with her consent. Her wish was that the daughter would live next to her forever – but the effect would of course have been that no bank in the world would give her a loan because such land does not represent security. So: clause in the land register, no security, no loan, no house, daughter moves to the other side of the world and breaks off all contact with the mother because she destroyed her life. Find the right advisors for yourself or yourselves! A retiree who himself would like to renovate a house again over many years by his own effort will always judge from his own perspective and never from the perspective of a young family. Someone who does not know current construction technology and does not want to learn about it is not an advisor for the present time and especially for the future. Someone who (sorry, statistics) still has a calculated life expectancy of 10-20 years is at least a biased advisor for a young family who is building a house for the coming decades. A house seller who knows exactly that the uninsulated ancient shack should simply be torn down will always say that you just need to repaint and mop. Find advisors who a) are experts and simply master the current state of technology b) have no personal interest in a specific solution.

And, very important: Proceed step by step and develop the steadfastness to politely ignore even the best-intentioned advice from non-experts. If I had done everything as the assembled relatives had suggested, I don't even want to think about it. We always bring up those family advice stories again in the evening over a glass of wine, and then good mood is guaranteed for hours.

So: Do YOUR thing! First get the plot of land and then you can and may do that! Then start the thought process with your husband. And then get advice and tell the advisor WHAT (as a result!) you want and ideally WHY. He can then tell you HOW to achieve it. Never put the cart before the horse and start with the finished solution ("I read a newspaper article about the heating system XYZ, I absolutely want that!") and adapt the problem to the solution.

You wrote that well.
I also sense that there is too much reverence towards the family, even if it has not yet been explicitly stated.
One may accept the support (property). But one should follow the contemporary path that suits them. And a healthy home financing, which has nothing to do with consumer loans, is also part of being contemporary.