No, directly at the city/municipality
Development area "Offenhain Nord"
So, to finally close the topic of the property and to help you with your decision-making regarding construction companies, here are a few tips/sharing of experience from my side, or rather our past and still current approach, since we also have not signed yet:
- Visit model house exhibitions, let yourself be inspired by all the prefab house companies and see where the differences lie. After the 10th conversation, you will notice yourself with whom you don’t want to talk a second time and who might be an option for you.
- Look at the catalogs on site/model houses on site, have conversations and then grab your laptop and google through. Look at the websites of the prefab house companies, read online blogs by homeowners who have built with various companies, see if the "style" of the houses or the company's philosophy (e.g., some companies put strong emphasis on ecology, etc.) suits you. The market is full of prefab house providers... You cannot compare them all. With a lot of internet research, lots of reading (also here in such companies) you can certainly filter out a few companies you want to consider more closely.
- Get in touch with the companies (not too many, otherwise you will eventually go crazy, maybe 4-5 companies), meet up or hold a phone-video conference and work out a first floor plan. You will thus have several floor plans available, try to develop one yourself that really appeals to you, see if you manage to come up with the floor plan you imagine. First and foremost, the initial floor plans/prices should serve to compare everything with each other. In the first conversations, a lot will be pushed on you, from which after some time you can tell who is good and who is not.
- Have all construction and service specifications sent to you, create an Excel list with all important points and compare all construction companies with each other. This is a lot of effort but will reward you in the end. You will recognize the different quality levels and can thus compare apples to apples and will not be surprised why one construction company ultimately wants way more or way less money for a similar house.
- Look very closely at what is important to you based on the construction and service specifications. Does it have to be the premium company? Is a mid-range company enough? How expensive can the house be? How high are your standards? Based on these construction and performance specifications, filter out a quality level and see which companies operate in that class. Then, if nothing suitable is found among the 4-5 filtered companies, more companies can be added.
- Meet again with the companies, work out the first offer, and try to bring all offers to the same level (floor plans, features) also pay very close attention to additional construction costs here, as there are enormous differences regarding which company may have included which costs.
- See where you feel comfortable (a lot of gut feeling when selecting the construction company!!), who works quickly, is constantly reachable for you, works cleanly, doesn’t tell you tall tales, advises you well, doesn’t just want to sell (very difficult to find such a person in the prefab house sector).
- Ultimately, the decision is made based on price in comparison to performance (the prepared Excel list for construction and service specifications).
--> I strongly recommend you definitely consider regional construction companies (solid construction or timber frame construction)! There you have much higher cost transparency, they are closer to the action (your project) and thus more tangible. They have a certain "reputation" to defend locally/in the surrounding area, possibly build many houses in your area. You will quickly notice that there are extremely big differences compared to the prefab house company that might be 500km away from you. No one cares about your property or such. They just want to sell their house (which does not necessarily have to be bad, it just depends entirely on your individual needs, or on what you really want and what is important to you when building).
You can compare these companies exactly the same way with the construction and service specifications against the nationwide prefab house providers.
In short: Compare the services of the companies 1:1 with each other; this only works if you get offered the same house everywhere (the floor plan as well as the specifications/services should be very similar), otherwise, it is very difficult to decide for a company. The prices differ enormously in some cases!!