No house building company - I gather everything myself

Hello dear building friends,

there is always a first time for everything and so here I am.
I’ll start to explain briefly (if brief is even possible :rolleyes:):

We inherited a plot of land from my parents. Size 860 m², the buildable area is 734 m² (awesome plot). We started the house building topic a bit late because we absolutely dislike being in debt. We, that is my wife and me (both mid-40s) and a 16-year-old daughter. The idea: to be done paying off when retirement calls. That’s just still doable in 20 years. So now we have to do some hectic stuff so that everything can be paid off.

It should be a small, let’s say 1.5-story house. Since we currently live in about 68 m² apartment and manage super well with it, we aren’t very demanding when it comes to space. We have roughly max. 110 m² in mind. Initially, we wanted to build a bungalow. But after visits to a house building fair and various house viewings, we are now rather more into the 1.5-story variant.

I work at a company where the most important initial “trades” are active: architects, structural engineers, construction managers. The construction manager also persuaded me with this: “Why don’t we do everything through the colleagues here from the company? I have the executing trades at hand so we’ll gather all the companies and then you don’t have to pay the expensive house building companies.”

Okay, I first think the idea is good. But what I really can’t estimate at all: how much cheaper will this be compared to the others? I once looked at catalogs and prices from a house building company. According to that, such a house would cost about €130,000. Now my brother-in-law, who just built a house with his buddies (each one a different trade) and roughly still has the prices in mind, said that with my colleagues I would end up with max. €90,000.

Can one of you who knows something somehow confirm that? I would like to have a rough number of where this journey is going. I know we can’t do a penny-precise calculation here but I would just be interested if I end up at the same price as the house building company or just a bit below, or if I really stay that much below like my brother-in-law says, or if in the end it even gets MORE expensive.

Thanks in advance to everyone who thinks about this… I know it’s a bit crazy

It is getting more expensive. Catalogs never have anything to do with reality. And building a house for 90,000 € I consider not feasible if it is to be a house according to current standards.

Not even if I practically pay a friendly price for the first 3 mentioned, so to speak?

The prices are a) very regionally variable, of course b) depend on your wishes and c) on the workload of your craftsmen. A house of this size is certainly doable for the money, but then really with zero extras. So standard electrical work, cheapest heating including high-temperature system with radiators, an insulation standard just sufficient to comply with the energy saving ordinance - a simple bathroom with run-of-the-mill equipment, floor coverings accordingly cheap, on the roof the cheapest Frankfurter Pfanne tiles etc. etc. If you are really undemanding, it can go in that direction. But it will certainly be tight. The story with the "circle of colleagues" first smells not quite legal and for that reason alone I would advise against it. However, it is certainly an advantage to have such forces in the background to possibly help out if things get tight in terms of time or you need a second opinion on certain issues. But also keep in mind that with that money you have not yet paid any additional costs, if they are still outstanding, that no garage has been built, no driveway paved, and the garden still looks like a rocket test site...

Not even if I practically pay a friendly price for the first three mentioned?

Especially for those, there is a "legal price binding" - called HOAI! Undercutting is prohibited. Only a "creative" interpretation helps here to achieve lower costs.

...
A house of this size is certainly doable for that money, but then really with zero extras.
So standard electrics, cheapest heating including high-temp system with radiators,
an insulation standard just enough to meet the energy saving ordinance - simple bathroom with run-of-the-mill
equipment, flooring correspondingly cheap, on the roof the cheapest Frankfurter tiles
and so on and so forth.
....
But also keep in mind that with that money you haven’t paid any additional costs yet, if they
are still outstanding, that there is no garage yet, no paved driveway and the garden
still looks like a rocket testing ground...

:D LOL "rocket testing ground" very good...

1. does that mean if my colleagues help me and basically want almost nothing for it that they have one foot in jail or what?

2. if we now assume the help of the colleagues (so they don’t end up in jail ;)) and the rest is done through "legal" trades and I don’t want to install the cheapest Chinese junk + air heat pump, then in the end I come to the same price as the "normal" house building company? But there must be some advantage if you organize the stuff yourself and don’t just make the house building company richer??