!!! Package insert - user manual for laypersons: the following text should only be thoroughly chewed and swallowed. That means, one should hallucinate a line break and a blank line behind every sentence end. I only wrote continuous text here because otherwise it would have become a page as tall as a man. !!!
Besides the prefabricated house manufacturers (timber frame/solid), there are so-called GUs (which providers would be exemplary to name here?) and individual trade assignments via architect/construction engineer? Is that correct?
I am beginning to realize that you probably understood even less than you yourself are aware of. So, let’s start right from Abraham:
Under the term "prefabricated house" you apparently collect all providers of a "finished house" in the sense of a "turnkey building" and basically see two ways, namely this one and, in contrast or alternatively, the composition of individual trades.
There is also a concept of "prefabricated house" in common usage, which there means a prefabricated house. That means a house is not completely site-built on the construction site but in two phases; namely, the shell is constructed wall panel by wall panel in a production hall and then transported by low-loader truck to the construction site, and there it is erected and the interior finishing is carried out. The majority of manufacturers of such houses practice this method with wooden frame panels (incorrectly, but commonly called "timber studs"). Due to weight, it is more difficult to transport and therefore done by far fewer manufacturers, but this is also possible with porous bricks, expanded clay or other "stone materials." There are also "solid wood" wall panels of various construction types, which are medium weight and newest on the market.
All "prefab" house manufacturers are general contractors ("GU") or, insofar as they offer "shell houses," shell general contractors, but do not call themselves that. The term GU is often only used for those GUs who traditionally build site-constructed houses ("stone on stone"), i.e. "masonry." General contractor means, from a commercial perspective, to act as the sole contractual counterpart of the builder, i.e. as a builder to offer all trades of the house construction – at least the shell – and to employ the craftsmen of the finishing trades as their employees or subcontractors. For the builder, this means:
one signature and a package price. General contractors offer their services both in architect tenders and directly to builders themselves. Many builders naïvely consider architects to be merely draftmakers, which is why they perceive their fees as unnecessarily high and would like to have this service "under the table cheaper." Many GUs have recognized this, themselves hired architects, and now offer house construction including planning services. Very particularly, over-clever builders want to save even more and consider it the smartest way to assign trades individually, as they dream of summing the respective cheapest contract lots. At this point, stinginess would bite its own tail, because then they would be missing the "cost-nothing-extra" architect of the GU. So some GUs act as shell general contractors including permit planning and let the builder continue to dream in peace of his over-cleverness. There are just several perspectives here. The one I consider the wisest is to plan your house with an architect – and not only up to approval, but turnkey in the figurative sense. That means the architect not only "draws" the house but also tenders the contract awarding (here again, I consider it clever to let the architect also bid as GU on the contracts) and also oversees the construction management. And to overflow the barrel of learned terms, there are also property developers. These are GUs who buy land and resell it in a package with houses built on it. For liquidity reasons, they increasingly do this not as was common earlier with already finished houses, but with contracts to begin building houses only after signing. The buyer can still significantly influence the planning here, feels thus like the builder (though legally he is not), and thus forgets the difference between GU and property developer (BT). As a result, housebuilding interested parties generally babble of "property developers" after contacts with BT, even if they mean a GU.
The latter category is our priority and we will soon seek talks with individual providers.
Look here in the section "Experiences with house building companies" in combination with the names of the nearest district towns around your building site (and/or with names of
regional builders you already know) – there you will encounter reviews of such companies and their competitors. If all else fails ;-) you can also add gmx (de) behind my member name, as long as you are not yet part of the round table of forum intramail PN authorized persons. But first, sit down safely, breathe deeply, as said chew well before swallowing, and if necessary order a Doornkaat from Günni – now you know, cheers :-)