Prefab house expert - sensible or wasted money?

Hello everyone,

Is a prefab house expert worth it?

We are still at the very beginning of our house-building plans. If we are lucky and get the contract for a plot in our town, we want to build a single-family house (approx. 140-160 sqm living space, with a basement) on it if possible.

One thing is certain for us: we want to build a prefab house.

Last weekend we had two consultation appointments at the Bauzentrum Poing. A certain Tobias Beuler, who presents himself as an expert on prefab houses and writes many different contributions on this topic, offers his services in contract negotiation, construction supervision, provider selection, etc. (for money, of course).

Has anyone had experience with this gentleman, positive or negative? Does it make sense, as a layperson, to have such an expert at your side, or is it wasted money and you will gain the expert knowledge yourself over time?

Thanks in advance!

Honestly? For this gentleman, I see it as wasted money. I just read through his blog and website in detail. He writes a lot of hot air; as a client who is researching prefabricated houses, these are initially a lot of great "insider" information, but nothing you wouldn’t learn yourself when dealing with the topic during the exploration phase (or can look up anywhere else).
What makes it worse is that this gentleman has no adequate and/or legally admissible training as an expert or appraiser. 85% of his resume is about "selling." So he is a good salesman!
My very urgent advice:

Better take a legally admissible expert with the appropriate training. Probably costs about the same, knows the standards and the "state of the art," also knows exactly where the botching happens, and can save your ass directly if necessary!

Through our construction-supervising expert, roughly estimated, we avoided additional costs between 30k and 40k, not to mention the nerves it would have cost me to endure various defects for a lifetime of the house.

In this sense, good luck and have fun in this exciting phase!

External links are actually not desired here.

we are still at the very beginning of our house building plans. [...]
What is certain for us is that we want to build a prefabricated house.

I see this fixation as a contradiction to the maturity level of the client's technical knowledge. How is this preference justified? - I ask because, based on experience, there is often a lot of misconception behind it.

I just read his blog and website in detail. He writes a lot of hot air; as a client who is informing himself about prefabricated houses, these are of course initially a lot of great "insider" information,

Here in the forum, if you ask nicely, you practically get your house planned for free or your ideas corrected for errors, and sometimes you even have to take a "holiday" for several weeks to digest all the information. What you can admire in the house pictures thread comes 90% from former beginners.

By the way, external links are not wanted here.

Well, how am I supposed to ask for an opinion about a provider or "prefabricated house expert" without giving the link to their site so people can take a look? That was anything but advertising. Anyway.

I always actually wanted a solid house, clearly built on stone for eternity. But I only found out years later that my mother-in-law’s house is a prefabricated house from the late 70s and, in my opinion, really well maintained. So if one from the 70s until today can last, then a prefabricated house built in 2020 should also last for the next 50 years.

On the other hand, I am put off by many stories about building solid houses, but also because I once worked in an architectural office myself (although rather for open-plan offices, schools, etc.), by how much can go wrong. Ultimately, without a construction manager/supervisor who acts in my interest, I wouldn’t want to tackle something like that. I am unable to handle that professionally or in terms of time myself. And with a prefabricated house, the construction only takes 2-3 days. Yes, that should also be controlled, but for that I would gladly hire an expert.

Through our construction-supervising expert, we roughly avoided extra costs between 30k and 40k, not to mention the nerves it would have cost me to endure various defects lifelong.

Is that what is meant by a "construction supervisor"? Or is that something else again?

Here in the forum, if you ask nicely, you basically get your house planned for free or your ideas error-corrected.

I’ll gladly come back to that ^_^

And with a prefabricated house, construction only takes 2-3 days. Yes, that should also be checked, but for that I would like to get an expert.

Exactly these naive ideas I meant: nothing is faster with the "prefabricated house," only the erection of the shell on the construction site seems so because you do not see all the previous little helper work done in the hall. But a lot can also be botched there – which you don’t see when the house arrives on the low loader. The construction supervisor would have to be there in the hall and check and document everything. What is unloaded there is often completed on site by the same subcontractors who would also be active in the local construction house.

Well, it's always nice to be called naive *ironyoff* I am well aware that the planning, the manufacturing of the elements, etc. also takes quite some time, but that's exactly what I mean. Does a construction manager / construction supervisor or whatever already go to the factory site during the manufacturing phase and take a look at everything before it goes to the construction site for the shell assembly?

Apart from that, but I may be wrong there too, I believe that at the end of the day a prefabricated house without many special requests is cheaper for us than a completely individually planned solid house with many reworks, repairs, etc. I know that topic all too well from said large projects. The companies of the individual trades roughly recovered about 20-40% of their money through additional charges. With a big client holding millions in reserve, that is possible, but not with a small private home builder like me.