Small house with 45 sqm on 867 sqm property Löwenberger, Brandenburg

Hello and good evening dear forum users,

I am super happy to have found this forum and hope for some good advice or experiences:

I am considering a beautiful plot in a forest settlement in Brandenburg, Löwenberger Land with 867 sqm area built with a 45 sqm solid small house stone by stone for €59,000. The house is completely renovated and ready to move in immediately. Upstairs there is a sweet bedroom with a balcony, downstairs a living room with dining area and adjacent kitchen, a small bathroom with a tub as well as a partial cellar and covered terrace, which I would actually like to close off to create another room. The little house basically has everything I want in a house, just in a small version. The plot is designated as building land, so you can build on it at any time and expand the house.

Now my question to you, what do you think of the offer or the idea? Is it cheaper to build an extension onto a small house than to build new? Can one roughly estimate the costs for an extension (1 room in timber frame construction) based on experience?

Looking forward to your answers and wishing you a great holiday.

Best regards, Sunny

How old is the building? Background to the question: if the house is already older, the settlements are less than if it is still quite young. Accordingly, with an extension you might possibly get additional problems due to uneven settlements.

For your project, a sketch might not be a bad idea so that everyone knows what you mean and how big something is supposed to be and how, for example, the extension can be realized.

Without this more detailed information, hardly anyone will be able to tell you anything about the costs or the feasibility.

But at that price, I would be interested to know what the value of the land alone is, etc.

Seems very cheap to me, even if it is very small.

Best regards

Good morning,

Thank you very much for your reply. Attached I am sending the link to the property I am interested in. The house was built in 1989. I would like to receive feedback or experience reports from everyone who is familiar with such projects.

I am wondering whether it makes more sense to invest more money right away in a bigger house or if I can get a bargain with this property and add 1-2 rooms?

I look forward to your answers.

So.. first of all, it doesn’t matter how old the house is, regarding the settlement, I mean. Houses don’t settle every year, or in other words, houses settle once and that’s it. A 100-year-old house doesn’t settle by 1 meter either!! That’s that. Now architects or engineers might object, then they should prove it to me with one of their planned projects and show me the geotechnical report and the structural plans!

45 m2 floor area means about 56 m2 built-up area. Another roughly the same upstairs results in roughly 110 m2 gross floor area. If newly built including demolition, it would cost max. 130,000 EUR. Of course, it also depends on the house connections, which either already exist or need to be newly installed. I am talking here about a turnkey object with boiler and radiators and assuming that all connections are present and none need to be newly installed.
If you plan a house measuring 10x10, so 100 m2 floor area plus the upper floor, we come to 200 m2 gross floor area (without basement), the upper floor with an eaves wall and then a pitched roof on top. Costs max. 250,000 EUR.

If you add the land costs and incidentals, we are at about 320,000 EUR. Please don’t make counter calculations; this was just rounded up or down. That’s how much the new build costs. Now you can calculate what an extension costs, although you will never get the connections from new to old completely sealed if the basement is also to be expanded.

I would ask the municipality how much floor area ratio and how many apartments or units are allowed on the plot. Then, if feasible, I would build two single-family houses and sell the second profitably.

Regards, Ingo

It is indeed relevant how long the house has been standing there, because the settlements of a house do not suddenly occur during construction and then stop, but the settlements are initially fast and then gradually decrease, never fully stopping. Anyone with some knowledge of the topic should also know this (keyword settlement model according to Terzaghi).

If the soil of the new building is compacted significantly differently than the one under the older house, it can lead to major problems at the transition point due to cracks and resulting leaks.

Best regards

I think Terzaghi has been dead for a long time and the questioner's little house has also been standing for a while... A soil expert or a structural engineer can definitely answer such a question.
A house that has been in place for 20 years—how much more will it settle? Can you answer that, @Thomas463? Surely you can’t.
Regardless of the settlements, anyone who is a professional can, if not exactly, at least roughly estimate the costs.
That’s exactly what I love about Germany... If you go to three different architects with the same floor plan, you get three different prices and countless warnings... Man, you have to be careful here, man, you have to be careful there... You get scared and worried when you want to build a little house. And everyone thinks they know better.
With such an attitude, Conny Reimann would be exactly where he was before his departure!