Single-family house approx. 150m², please provide your evaluation/assessment

Hello everyone,

since this is our first post, we’ll just briefly introduce ourselves. We are a young couple, 29 years old, and have been living together in rental apartments for 8 years. Now that we were finally able to settle down professionally, we have been thinking about buying a plot of land and building a house, and we were able to warm up to the idea.

We have now also found a nice plot, which unfortunately is tied to a developer. Since it is very difficult to find plots, we nevertheless obtained an offer. As a guideline, we set him a price limit of 450,000 euros (including additional costs). However, the offer was 407,000 euros without additional costs. The construction performance description is also not completely satisfactory, so additional costs of 20,000 euros would be incurred. Including additional costs and the outdoor facilities, etc. (I hope I haven’t forgotten anything and have calculated generously), we come to 520,000 euros, which is unfortunately far too much.

In principle, we are reasonably satisfied with the design, but we will have to make restrictions to reduce costs. Our requirements for square meters and equipment are listed below.

We look forward to your opinions and wish you a nice weekend.

Best regards from OStwestfalen

[Development plan/restrictions]
Size of the plot 478m²
Slope no
Floor area ratio 0.4
Plot ratio 0.8
Building window, building line and boundary
Edge development
Number of parking spaces
Number of floors 2
Roof shape gable roof
Style
Orientation
Maximum heights/limits – max eaves height 4.80m, ridge height 11m
Other specifications

[Requirements of the builders]
Style, roof shape, building type gable roof, modern
Basement, floors no basement, 2 floors
Number of persons, age couple (29 years old) + planned 2 children
Space requirements on ground floor, upper floor
Ground floor: 65m² excluding corridor
Upper floor: 58m² excluding corridor
Office: family use or home office? only family
Overnight guests per year 1-2
Open or closed architecture gladly large open living-dining area with partly open kitchen
Conservative or modern construction gladly modern
Open kitchen, cooking island – would be nice but not necessary
Number of dining seats – one dining place for 6-8 people
Fireplace – no
Music/stereo wall – no
Balcony, roof terrace – no
Garage, carport – double garage with storage room
Utility garden, greenhouse – no
Other wishes/special features/daily routine, gladly also reasons why this or that should or should not be

[House design]
Who is the planner:
Developer / architect

What do you like particularly: garage and living/dining area and large utility room

What do you not like: children’s room upstairs a bit too small, bathroom too large, sauna not necessary. Staircase directly in the area of the front door

Price estimate according to architect/planner: 300,000 euros + plot

Personal price limit for the house, including equipment: approx. 250,000

Favored heating technology: gas

If you have to give up something, on which details/extensions
– you can give up: dressing room, garage but then double carport instead
– you cannot give up: large living-dining area, guest toilet with shower, study/guest room

Why is the design as it is now? For example:
Standard design from the planner. We would like to put the bay window on the north side.

What is the most important/basic question about the floor plan in 130 characters summarized?

Our idea was:
- Single-family house
- Upper floor: 3 bedrooms (15 - 18 m²) + bathroom (approx. 10m²) 55 – 64m²
- Ground floor: small shower bathroom (4m²), utility room (approx. 10m²), living-dining area (approx. 30m²), kitchen (approx. 10m²), study/guest room (8m²) = 62m²
117-126 m² excluding corridor / vestibule etc. unfortunately we don’t know how much to calculate here.
- Double garage with entrance to utility room (would be a dream but not a must)

Our limit with all additional costs was 450,000 euros – the plot costs 130,000 euros. The plot is tied to a developer.

We look forward to your opinions.

Have a nice weekend too.

Personally, I don't think the draft is all that bad. Even quite good. At the expense of the dressing room/bedroom, you could enlarge children's room 2 without extra costs.

Have you thought about where you can save the 70k€? The heating would probably be gas, so it probably won't work there. 70k is quite a sum that you can't easily offset with your own work.

It also doesn't really make sense to discuss floor plans if you have no solution for the missing money. Do you have one? The planner/architect is also planning 50k€ over budget based on the construction service description!

I'm also thinking of a similar floor plan. There's something like that from an FH provider. Well stolen is half won: search for "Neo 311 mit Erker auf BP in BW". Of course, this is not meant as a recommendation for an FH... but it always serves as inspiration for floor plan planning. And because you're also asking about prices. As a solid house in KS with ETICS from 287,000 plus additional construction costs plus price increase from April in southern Germany. So the estimate from the architect doesn't seem bad at all.

The easiest way to save money is to leave out the [Gaube]. That probably saves roughly +/- 10 thousand... but whether you want that - or rather why did you want it on the north side? It really doesn’t make any sense at all over the stairs...?!

I find it quite pointless to discuss a floor plan that is so far outside the budget. My opinion: remove the music room, halve the utility room, halve the upstairs bathroom, and eliminate the walk-in closet.

haha kaho - perfectly summarized. But you have had experience with floor plans for a long time ;)