That is a very nicely written post, thank you very much for it!
In fact, we are now also going to try to cut back on certain things. Probably the masonry double garage will become just a prefab garage. We also want to do without the kids' bathroom; at some point we won't need it anymore anyway.
Otherwise, our equipment is anything but luxurious. Plastic windows, plastic front door, standard bathroom, etc.
May I ask what investment volume (excluding land) you are facing?
Gladly, I know how nerve-wracking building a house is and think that thread starters here in the forum could use encouraging words more often instead of provocative questions, I find that more motivating for myself :) In my circle of friends there is similar frustration, good salaries, years of hard work, but a house is simply unrealistic for most people here. The good thing about your situation is therefore that building a house should still be possible, you just must not lose more time than necessary because prices will not decrease in the foreseeable future. And don’t lose courage when the house turns out different than expected. My parents had to move very far out of Munich for their time to pull off the project; more than a corner townhouse was definitely not possible and my father commuted nearly an hour every day for 40 years. Professionally, however, things developed extremely well, my father made a big career and could have afforded a nice detached house with all the extras. Well, we stayed in our beautiful townhouse, had an extremely happy childhood, my parents invested a lot of time and money into the garden design and great vacations, and my mom still lives today in our dearly beloved family home. Just as a note that we are very grateful to finally be able to fulfill the dream of a house now and thanks to my dad many things are possible which simply wouldn’t be for others, but we always keep in mind that family life and personalities determine the house and its ideal value, not the size, fancy tiles, or price.
Yes, definitely do the garage that way, especially if, like us, you need to build a green flat roof a masonry garage isn’t worth it, the prefab ones don’t look bad and theoretically you can also put a nice roof on them (which we couldn’t do because of drainage since it’s right at the house and on the property boundary).
Honestly, our total volume is not yet final because we haven’t calculated the exterior work yet.
We are also in Bavaria but still in the city of Munich, so please always consider our figures with a Munich surcharge. We signed in 2020 and included quite a lot in the contract already that we knew would not be standard and have some architectural cost drivers. The base price for the house is around €820,000, which includes a porch (like American houses over the veranda), two dormers, a straight staircase with oak treads and risers, sash windows, an air-to-water heat pump, a prefab garage without a roof, partly electric shutters (not throughout the house), an elevated price for the square meter rates for tiles and parquet, and a mid-range fireplace.
Added costs were necessary additional costs (especially the ancillary costs far exceeded the 65,000€ estimated by the builder, particularly earthworks and sewage work), partly necessary additional costs (electrical upgrade: outdoor lighting and sensible light switches are a must for us) and additional costs that we simply wanted (mainly bathroom fixtures, tile laying and types, different interior doors matching the house style).
Currently I only know two other builders from Bavaria and both are building in the outskirts of Munich, so I find it very difficult to estimate how high prices are in your area. In the surroundings, the "normal" 160 m2 houses (new builds) with few extras in the fittings are all between €600,000-800,000 including everything (kitchen, some landscaping, and ancillary costs) but WITHOUT land. However, I had hoped these crazy prices are only like this for us and that further north it would still be quite possible to build a house with some nice wishes for €500,000-600,000. Do you know other families currently building in your area and can expect some honest answers? Alternatively, you could also look on Facebook for some prefab house groups in your area (like Hanse Haus builders Bavaria or something similar), prices are often discussed there and you can better estimate whether those are normal prices or if you have specials that are expensive but nobody ever told you about :)
Also, be sure to inform yourselves about all current subsidies possible, our builder had no interest and we had to research everything ourselves, but it’s worth it. For us, there was still BAFA for the air-to-water heat pump (I think there is something new here as far as I know) and a KFW subsidy would have theoretically been possible too, but in our special situation it didn’t work out.