Opportunities for municipal land, experiences?

Have you spoken to the private seller and explained the situation to him?

Is he in a hurry to sell the property, or would he perhaps give you time to see if the other properties work out or not?

There are said to be people who are willing to negotiate.

Have you spoken to the private seller and explained the situation to him?

LOL What is the OP supposed to say? Dear seller, we are very interested in your property. Please turn down all other interested parties in the next few months, but it may be that we won’t buy it at all because we actually prefer to buy somewhere else.

You could buy the private property and still apply for the others. If you're lucky, you sell the worse one again. Of course, this depends on supply and demand. If that is not financially an option, I would probably risk hoping for the better offers from the municipality.

Property transfer tax and notary fees and problems with the final financing if it is not sold in time.

There are construction areas where there are still 20 applicants per place and there are various points and rating systems. Therefore, the forum cannot assess the chances. 20-30 minutes travel time is not too much, especially if you can travel together.

Just to put it into perspective: I live in Berlin. I work in Berlin. By public transport, it takes me about an hour. By bike, about an hour and fifteen minutes (but then I have to shower at the office). By car, it would definitely take an hour in the morning and one and a half to two hours in the evening. I could probably also travel by watercraft, but that definitely takes too long. Within a city! Since I only go to the office 2 days a week, that’s manageable. When we chose the property, it wasn't like that yet (Corona was just starting). So we knew what was coming my way. But social connection was more important to me (although there are some in the southwest, I couldn’t have afforded a property within Berlin there, and going further out into the Brandenburg countryside was something I wasn’t ready for at the time). That’s why 30 minutes would be a dream for me. Do you have the possibility to work from home? Then I wouldn’t really consider that a significant issue.

Thank you for all the answers.

Buying a private property and selling it if necessary, if it works with the municipality, is not possible due to the financial situation and because the municipality does not sell properties to people who already own one.

With a job change, the private property becomes less interesting and the commute would presumably increase by 5-10 minutes.

Unfortunately, home office is out of the question for me, I work as a maintenance technician. For my wife, it will probably also be a long time before that is an option.

Shopping facilities are not on the way from the private property.

On Saturday we have a viewing appointment with the seller, but I don't quite know what I will say there yet. Some friends and family live closer to the private property, but that would mean about €200 additional costs per month that would grow with inflation for the commute. A friend even lives on the same street, but both have home office and are financially better off. Houses are no longer cheap and we are already trying to build as cheaply as possible, so the additional €200 really hurts. Plus the difference in commute time. After all, about 30 minutes per day are lost additionally. In general, I still find up to 30 minutes commute time just bearable if you can't get anything else.