Thank you very much! I can already see that building a house is truly a rollercoaster of emotions. It goes straight to the heart of the matter
Don’t worry! That lasts until moving in + a few months. Building a house is a phase of life that – no matter how it’s done – leads you to leave your usual comfort zones for a certain period of time.
Read the tips here, many of them are extremely good.
Get yourself some literature.
Read good quality home magazines; there are quite a few on the market. For inspiration and entertainment, I still regularly read certain publications today.
Depending on the budget and further factors (development plan), you then choose the building method (solid construction, timber frame, ...) and house and floor plan. Purely according to your lifestyle (now, in the future).
Visit model home exhibitions as much as possible. Here in Swabia, I only specifically know the one in Ulm. Of course, there are others. The one in Wuppertal is also very useful, albeit probably far away for you and only interesting if you consider a prefab house.
Read construction diaries online.
Don’t get distracted by too many providers. Inform and filter beforehand. Then proceed purposefully with the top 5 in question; otherwise, you drown in calls and provider stalking and waste time and nerves aimlessly. Also, there is the risk of not seeing the forest for the trees.
Once you have found the TOP 3 providers: Clarify the construction and service specifications precisely. Even with turnkey construction, many tasks and additional costs and add-ons still await you. The fair provider lists *everything* (my favorite topic #1: ancillary building costs). In conversations, you can insist that this is done. The better you know your stuff, the more targeted your questions, the fewer surprises (= trouble, money) come later.
Well prepared like this, the whole thing becomes quite manageable. Of course, at first it still feels like “torture, the phantom giant” to you. However, the closer you get to everything, the smaller it becomes. In hindsight, the giant from before is not so big anymore.
Phases in which all this is also a lot of fun: are part of it. But once you’re finished, the fun really begins.
Best regards Thorsten