Price and Quality Ranking of Prefabricated House Providers

Hello everyone,

we are planning to build a single-family house and would like to take a look at some prefabricated house providers.

Now, the number of providers is almost endless and we would like to narrow down the selection from the start.

Maybe a brief word about our project, although we are just at the beginning of the planning:

It should be a detached single-family house with approx. 170 - 180 m2 of living space. A basement is not planned (please no basement discussion). Our budget for the pure house construction without additional costs is between 300,000 - 350,000 euros. We do not want luxury but solid quality with decent equipment.

Now we need some help to reduce the selection to 4-5 providers at least.

Is there any kind of ranking for prefabricated house providers regarding quality and price? Of course, no absolute statements can be made, as it also depends a lot on the individual specifications, but such a general tendency should be predictable. For example, lower, middle and upper price ranges with corresponding equipment.

There are providers in Hohenstein and Rheinau which are of the highest quality.

There are certainly more than five in each sector in terms of price and quality that are on the same level. The differences then lie in different concepts and philosophies.

For example, you can build particularly ecologically, where the field is then narrower. If a particularly short construction time is desired, the degree of prefabrication must accordingly be higher. Cables and wall rails already from the factory and dry screed would be possible here.
Everyone can shift walls within the given external dimensions; completely free planning, however, cannot.
Would you prefer gypsum fiberboards on the wall, or two-layered OSB and plasterboard?

These are just the examples that came to my mind the quickest; there are significantly more. So you would need to specify your requirements a bit, and even then, the list will be missing one or another very good company.

Basically, you can say that you won’t be burning money with the big companies. Therefore, I would recommend a model house park. Depending on the corner of BW either Ulm, Fellbach, Mannheim, or also Bad Vilbel. The last one has the newest houses on the list, which is why it is included despite being in Hessen.
After you have gained an impression, I would talk further with those I personally find the most likable. The price differences afterwards (with the same equipment) are not that high, and you will be dealing regularly with this person for about one year. The "nose factor" is therefore not unimportant.

I had almost suspected that, like with everything in the topic of building, it won't be easy. I think we will just have a look around at the prefabricated house exhibition in Mannheim. Our requirements are not really clear to us yet, as we are still at the very beginning of our planning. We don't necessarily need an elaborate floor plan; here we are quite willing to compromise and will manage with a standard floor plan. Also, whether the construction time takes a few months longer or not is not really decisive, and it doesn't have to be especially ecological either (although a lot is already strictly regulated by various laws). However, I place great value on proper home automation based on KNX. I think quite a few providers will be eliminated because of that.

If not almost all...

Here I would also rather completely remove the electrical installation from their offers and do it with a regional experienced KNX installer. Why most people really don’t want to tackle it is a mystery to me, it’s not really rocket science. For the planning of a reasonable installation, half a day in the sample center is in my opinion too little. For me, it has been a development process for several months, in which I read a lot about other projects, look for ideas, and then discuss them with my installer (email). He of course always brings fresh ideas as well, so that in the end, hopefully, I get the optimal solution for me. Construction will be in the 3rd - 4th quarter, by the way... Planning in half a day, or even 1-2 full days, would have been unthinkable for me, but that also has to do with how extensive it is supposed to be for you.

Whether the construction period takes a few months longer or not is not really that crucial, and it doesn't have to be particularly ecological either (although a lot is already strictly regulated here by various laws).

And why then a prefab house? What do you mean by a prefab house?