Has anyone built a house in Germany on a budget?

[Ginnylamb]

I must be missing something.

Our local Gemeinde offers subsidised plots to einheimischen Bevölkerung... Ironically we qualify. It's to keep families in the area, allow locals to afford to live here etc - were in the most expensive part of the country. A 4 bed house here costs at least 650k

Far more people want the plots than can have them, so there's a points system - maximum points for earnings under 40k but qualify if you as a family earn under 90k€ per year, savings must be under 75k€ and shed loads of dependant children get you points too

In a local big, but lovely, town these subsidised plots are €200k plus roughly the same again for Erschließung. In villages it and Erschließung comes in at about €200k althogether.

That's just the land.

Then there are incredibly detailed requirements about what can be built which mean you aren't allowed to put up the absolute cheapest fertighaus going, you pretty much have to use an architect.

How do people do it? It seems a logical impossibility...

We've won the points lottery and been awarded first refusal on a plot, but are now doubting we'll be allowed to borrow enough to buy the it and put a house big enough for the family which meets planning restrictions on it. If we had less kids or more money we wouldn't have got the plot though!

Can anyone enlighten me as to whether were missing something? We know about Baukindergeld but you can't access that until after you've built the house!

Is there a secret pot of gold we're supposed to know about?

How do people do this?

If you built your house how much did the build excluding plot cost, if you don't mind saying?

I have no experience with building a house on the cheap (or even building a house at all!), but just wanted to touch on a few of the other things mentioned in your post.

You said you’re in the most expensive part of the country, so I’m guessing maybe South / South East of Munich? If that is the case then €400k for the land sounds like a pretty good deal indeed. How big is the plot?

As you said, building requirements in Germany are incredibly detailed and strict, so building a house without an architect is usually a bad idea. Apart from the bundes- and landesgesetzlichen requirements you will also have to take into account the local Gestaltungssatzung which can be fairly liberal or an absolute nightmare depending on your Gemeinde, so probably best to hire a local architect who has experience with what exactly you can and can’t do there.

Re. the Baukindergeld, I thought when building your house 'in Eigenregie' this was accessible once you had your Baugenehmigung? Do you really have to finish the house first? Either way I would have thought that your bank would still be able to take the Baukindergeld into account?
I think your first step should be to find out how much you would be able to borrow. Then book an hour with a local architect to find out if building a house and what type and size of house would be feasible with the funds available.
Would you be willing and able to do some of the work yourself or move into a half-finished house an do the rest bit by bit?

If you do decide to go for it, I would strongly recommend getting legal advice on the Erschließungsbeiträge before you commit. It’s a pretty complex topic that leads to a fair few court cases and costs can and do sometimes spiral out of control. Is this a ‚Neubaugebiet auf der grünen Wiese‘ where everything has to be done from scratch or are there any existing roads, other houses and infrastructure already? If it’s the latter, the Gemeinde should possibly only be charging you Straßenausbaubeiträge rather than Erschließungsbeiträge which could mean much lower or even no costs for at least some of the work. Bavaria abolished Straßenausbaubeiträge last year (some other Bundesländer have or are about to follow suit) so unless they’re basically starting from scratch with no existing roads, canalisation, etc., there could be lots of things they shouldn’t be charging you for at all but may be trying it on by classifying it all as Erschließung instead of Ausbau.
If there are Erschließungskosten to be paid you also need to look at wether these have been split fairly between all the plots according to their size and (potential) use. The whole thing is a bit of a minefield and I have recently seen a case where a Gemeinde overcharged out client by about €50k (due to sheer incompetence rather than malice). Sorry for the essay, but if you decide to buy, definitely have a Fachanwalt für Verwaltungsrecht look over the Erschließungskosten bit.

I would love to hear the outcome of this!

Thanks Taxi that's useful. The plots are very good value, whilst simultaneously being incredibly expensive for just a square of soil... We'd end up with property worth far more than it cost us if we can manage it (though you can't sell for 15 years, understandably given the motivation for offering the subsidised plots).

We were also wondering how the Erschließung can be do expensive given that it's less than half that price in other areas. I understand vast variation in land price according to location but the massive variation in prices for putting in infrastructure seems more puzzling. The plots are entirely flat and right next door to existing housing, on a paved road. The plans show another road which isn't there yet so I wonder if they are planning to charge us for that! There will only be two new plots, right on the edge of an existing housing area of properties of various ages, so maybe that's an issue, but water pipes, sewage, electricity supplies etc should only need extending a short distance. The plots are 500 meters square.

We definitely need to look into the Erschließung cost more.

Baukindergeld looks as though it cant be taken I to account when applying for a mortgage, but we must be missing something, otherwise nobody who qualifies for a plot with the maximum earnings and savings limits would be able to borrow enough to build a house which meets planning restrictions on the plot!

I naively thought we could put the actual house up for under 200k, ideally well under, but this is looking unlikely.

Sadly the Strassenausbaubeiträge rules are only about existing roads I think, not about putting in new roads for new building plots...

www.sueddeutsche.de/bayern/strabs-bayern-landtag-schafft-strassenausbaubeitraege-ab-1.4015854

Yes, that is correct, Erschließungsbeiträge and Straßenausbaubeiträge are two different types of Kommunalabgaben, the first for new roads and infrastructure, the second for the improvement and upkeep of already existing roads. In your case Erschließungskosten (=costs for a new road / stretch of road) of €200k seem ridiculously high and quite unusual. It’s not even a huge plot of land, it’s on a paved road, right next to existing houses and infrastructure, so extending water pipes, gas, sewage, etc for a few meters can’t possibly come to anywhere near those costs (should be closer to something between 10-30k). My suspicion was that the Gemeinde may be trying to palm off the costs of improving the existing road (could be anything from new sewage pipes to adding a bike lane or a pavement) on you and declaring them as Erschließungsbeiträge even though they are actually Straßenausbaubeiträge (which have to come out of the public purse now).

If the plans show another new road, the high costs may well be for that. Would this road even benefit you? Which other plots would it serve, who owns them and how can they be used (for example Bauland vs. agricultural use only)? If it only serves the two new plots and for example adjacent farmland, I would not be surprised if the farmland (owned by either the Gemeinde or someone well-connected) gets turned into more building plots that can be sold at a higher price shortly after the road has been completed (and paid for mostly by you and your future neighbour!). I know it sounds a bit paranoid, but it’s exactly the type of slightly dodgy thing I can see (and have seen) happening in some Bavarian small towns and villages.
Of course the plot may still be a good deal at that price, but if you commit to shouldering a major chunk of the cost for an entire new road, there is a risk of the costs getting out of hand. So definitely get legal advice and look closely at what has been proposed.

That Baukindergeld can’t be taken into account when applying for a mortgage is just ridiculous! I recently read about how most people who had applied for Baukindergeld had bought an existing property rather than build a house themselves so that the Baukindergeld so far hasn’t had the desired effect of creating new housing. I wonder why that might be….

Re. you missing something and how do other people do it - unfortunately, I’m not sure you are! Property prices have risen a lot, building costs are through the roof mainly due to ever more ridiculous insulation and fire safety requirements, but German mortgage lenders maintain extremely conservative lending policies. Then of course taxes and Notargebühren. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we have one of lowest ownership rates in Europe.
My parents live in a lovely but very expensive Bavarian postcard village. Those that manage to build a house on the cheap there tend to be people who work in a trade and have lots of tradespeople friends so they can do most of the work themselves or get mates’ rates. Very frustrating if you haven’t got any of those skills and connections yourself!

Sorry for being negative, the property market around here (we’re in Munich) just depresses me a bit! I really hope it all works out for you!

I looked into building our own house here as well. (We're not near Munich but just outside Frankfurt so prices are also incredibly high.) In the end, we decided to buy and do the house up. The plots we looked at for new housing were generally too small -we wanted a big garden- and the houses too close together and overlooked. Alternatively, the plots were too far from Frankfurt and we wouldn't have been able to commute into the city.
We were incredibly lucky to have found our house for the price we paid for it. We're putting a similar amount to the house price into it to modernise and extend it. It's in a bit of a state at the moment but it will be amazing once it's finished. Everything else around here, with a similar size plot, is about 600-800k, depending on how much work it'll need.

I'd look for a house, especially through a private sale since our estate agent fees were about 6% of the house price. Taxes had to be paid upfront and were similar. You aren't allowed to take a loan out for those.

However, with the mortgage the bank were quite generous and would have given us a lot more than we've taken on. Interest rates are still quite low and ours is currently fixed for the next 15 years.