Purchase of property under a work contract

Hello,

I hope you can help us here!
We will only be able to purchase our property via notary at the end of August. No appointments available before that.
We wanted to sign the contract for work now in July so that our construction company can still block the appointment in May 2017.
How is it with the [grunderwerbsteuer]?
The property comes from the city and we found the construction company on our own.
Can we safely sign the contract for work before purchasing the property without paying the [grunderwerbsteuer] on house and property?

Thanks in advance

You only have to pay the real estate transfer tax on the house and the land if you buy both from one provider. Since you are buying the land from the city and having the house built independently by a construction company, you only have to pay the real estate transfer tax on the land. If development costs are listed with the land, then you do not have to pay real estate transfer tax on these.

Well, someone is really sticking their neck out with that answer.

Am I so wrong here? :( (That was my current understanding)

Can we safely sign the construction contract before purchasing the property without paying the real estate transfer tax on the house and land?

Basically, the information is not sufficient to answer that. Are the builder and the seller of the property somehow connected?

We circumvented the issue by dating the contract for work to a date after the purchase agreement.
This meant that at the time of the land purchase we were still free to decide which construction company to build with. That would not be the case with the TE.

There are certain indications of a connected transaction, which is fully subject to real estate transfer tax. Among other things, the date of the contract for work being before the purchase contract date is such a point.

At least in our case, there was a questionnaire with questions like
- whether the land and the house are acquired from the same company
- whether it was already decided at the time of the land purchase with whom to build
- whether offers were obtained from several construction companies
- how one found out about the land

In this case, it is relatively clear that there is no connected transaction here, as the land is purchased from the city. Personally, I would avoid it anyway.