Prepare the smart home for future expansion (no wireless/cloud)

Also IT people here and I had the same train of thought as you. I was also about to chisel slots and lay cables, but I didn’t really have any real knowledge of KNX. Just the basics. Same as you. Then I took a step back mentally 2–3 steps and thought about it again. If you start pulling cables through all the channels yourself, you will absolutely lose it and your electrician still has to pull his cables in between. Working as a professional craftsman together with a layman will absolutely test your patience. Everything has to be somehow coordinated. If a layman were to interfere with everything at work, I would completely lose it. Not to mention that everything takes three times as long then. That made it clear to me that either the electrician does everything or I do without it. Since a KNX system was too expensive for me, I gave up on it and had everything wired traditionally for now. Only Ethernet I had laid into all rooms + hallway ceilings (for APs) + outside, etc. I will now retrofit everything myself with Shellys, Zigbee, Thread, Matter, Homebridge, etc. I also have that in our current rented apartment, and we are very satisfied with it. We all have iPhones and use Homekit virtually as a frontend for it. That makes it usable even for the biggest idiot. It is reliable so far, we currently have less than 1–2 outages per year in the apartment. Of course, it’s not as clean a solution as a KNX system, but somewhere that is also a hobby for IT people like us. For others, it is gardening; I tinker around with stuff like this. But for that, I can do everything exactly the way I imagine it. At the beginning of building the house, you always have the claim that everything has to be perfect. Now, after the 1000th decision and endless additional costs, I am just glad that we can move in soon.

I think it's bad in today's times. But that's just my opinion.

It's better if he says it clearly and plainly beforehand! Worse is if the electrician goes along with it, GH or sales plan something together due to their own lack of knowledge, and in the end someone has to come for a lot of money to fix it. Bad for the customer, but the fault already lies in the choice of the electrician.

I think it's bad in today's time. But that's just my opinion.

The electrician already reached his limits with a standard electrical installation, and in some cases I even pulled my own wiring because his were in a very gray area of admissibility, definitely did not meet my standards. I think it's good that he says: I don't do smart homes; if you want that, no problem, then another company will come. My neighbors are building with the same builder, want a full smart home but still save money. So they had all the electrical work done by their own electrician who said "oh, sure, I'll do it!" and thought to himself, "once is always the first time." Result: After he pulled all the cables completely unrecorded, he disappeared without a trace, and a new electrician had to find out where each cable led. So for me, a clear "I don't do smart homes, please go to a colleague" is just fine. Whether the electrician will still be successful long with this model is another matter.