Terminate construction service contract - Reservation

Have the 18 months passed and did no land offers actually come from the company? Because of the new land, I would definitely keep quiet as well. You don't have to let anyone know about that.

You could have sent that letter six months ago.

We would have, yes. We checked again six months ago whether this period was over and considered the matter closed. Writing or anything else was never mentioned. When the contract was concluded, he assured us that we did not need to take any further steps, i.e., the contract simply expires and is then settled. I just wanted to do everything right and be fair, so I followed up again by phone.

We were never offered a plot of land; there were only two telephone inquiries asking if we had a plot in view. We were able to deny that.

yes, the 18 months expired in October 16. No offer, no purchase.

Unprofessional is the fact that the broker did not want to understand us. He immediately wanted the letter in which we withdraw from the reservation. Of course, we did not send that. We also have not signed the property yet. Only reserved. The whole company is dubious. He wanted to enforce the old conditions that we had contractually agreed upon at the time. Only the new thermal insulation regulation would cost us extra. When asked how much that would be, he evasively answered "that would have to be seen then". We also have a contractually agreed cost ceiling. But they will not be able to keep that. And we do not want to end up with a construction ruin. The company was briefly in the spotlight last year on "Die Bauretter" on RTL 2, surely that rings a bell. Even though some things are exaggerated there and the clients were not entirely blameless in the mess, the handling of the problem by company X was impossible.

Then do it like nordlys wrote. The time is up and they didn’t offer anything either. Then it’s pretty clear. Have a lawyer handle it, it costs a few euros, but I think you need this path just for your own nerves :-)

They threatened us with contractual penalties, which had never been mentioned before.

On what basis, was that not mentioned? Contractually agreed with the developer? And was it actually about contractual penalties or possibly rather about a lump-sum compensation for damages? The contractual details play a very important role here – just like the circumstances of the contract conclusion – especially in consumer contracts, such details often offer various points of attack, so these nuances do matter. When implementing such contractual pressure measures in contracts to be assessed under general terms and conditions law, developers can easily make many mistakes (just a small tip: see, among others, § 309 No. 5 and 6 of the Building Code).