Property search: Strategies in metropolitan areas, e.g., Frankfurt

Hello everyone,

we want to build but do not have a plot of land yet. We do not want to purchase the plot from a house building company, so we are searching independently. We come from Frankfurt am Main (we are aware that we will have to leave the city and move to the outskirts), and any plots we find online are in the millions – so rather something for investors. The search via ImmoScout is obviously not the right one. Since we unfortunately do not know anyone we could ask for advice, I thought I would ask here how best to hunt for building land in our situation. You always hear about the plot services of house building companies, maybe such land agents also exist solo. I have already made some calls, but they all said they only specialize in real estate.

Just to clarify: We are aware that we will not get a plot for free. But between the standard land value and three to four times that, there must be options.

How far do you want/can you get out of Frankfurt? If you head towards Fulda, it gets significantly cheaper.

You can also find plots from cities and municipalities on [kip] - just search for municipal real estate platform ([links are not allowed here]).

How far do you want/can you go out of Frankfurt? If you orient yourself towards Fulda, it gets significantly cheaper.

If we don't find anything in the immediate vicinity of Frankfurt, we want to orient ourselves more towards the south, i.e. the region between Frankfurt and Mannheim/Heidelberg. I just find it so frustrating that there are no offers, even if you were willing to pay a surcharge. We hope that this will change within our search radius...

Thanks for the tip

Flexibility is required. You are not the only ones in your region or nearby looking for a plot of land. I can only advise not to necessarily exclude developers. Usually, a semi-detached or terraced house or a project with several detached houses with small ideologically divided plots is still better than staying in your rental apartment or condominium. Many developers also do not have significantly different prices or construction service descriptions compared to independent general contractors. Because even if you build with a general builder or general contractor, not everything is possible since the budget is limited. Ultimately, the tied business is often only unattractive because you have to pay property transfer tax on both. But you write yourself that you would accept surcharges. That would then be the surcharge.

Since unfortunately we don’t know anyone we could ask for advice, I thought I’d ask here how to best hunt for building land in our situation. You always hear from house building companies about their land service, maybe there are such real estate agents solo as well.

You are welcome to ask me for advice, I have already given some to a few people in this forum (Forum search > 11ant Barthel). There are also some search results here on the topic “land service” that deal with this farmer trap scam. Also by real estate agents? – please not!

If we don’t find anything in the immediate vicinity of Frankfurt, we want to orient ourselves more towards the south, so the region between Frankfurt and Mannheim/Heidelberg. I just find it so annoying that there are no offers, even when you would be willing to pay a premium. We hope that this will change within our search radius…

Not expanding the search radius at least is already one of the mentioned Barthel tips. You should tell more about yourselves and why you want to build. Frankfurt or Heidelberg, as long as it’s Milan or something like that… I see a need to clarify the background. For example, starting along the template of the questionnaire could be a start…

I can only advise not to necessarily exclude developers. Usually, a semi-detached or terraced house or a project with several single-family homes with small ideologically shared plots of land is still better than staying in your rental apartment or condominium.

Such properties do at least exist in reality or at least in planning, while land service offers are fantasy constructs. What is your main motivation anyway, to look only for “brewery-free” plots?

For example, by following the template of the questionnaire , one could start like this ...

Or also like there: – it talks about a small child, another planned, and actually pretty much the typical developer semi-detached house (140 sqm with 300 sqm plot). So check out the offers from the "usual suspects" here (again such a search term leading to threads of the same): Wengerter, Werner, Weisenburger, Brale, Traumhaus, Hildmann, Deutsche Reihenhaus, Wilma, Tecklenburg, ...