Build Your Home

Having a dream to own a house in a foreign country is surely easy. But bringing that dream to life? Definitely not. Having experienced it personally prompted me to put it all in words. It all started with a research on a number of real estate websites / immobilien applications for a few old houses (previously occupied but now on sale) .On each of our visits we had learnt something new e.g. how to look for loopholes that won’t be mentioned in the brochure, how to estimate the hidden costs and so on. Over the span of 12 months we ended up checking out 100+ properties.

We couldn’t unfortunately find the one we could have been content with. In the case of a few properties, we couldn’t make a decision and in some the property owner didn’t select us among the shortlisted. The one positive thing out of these innumerable excursions for us was that we got familiar with the beautiful villages nearby. We are blessed with some wonderful German friends and they suggested we look around for a construction site (which in Germany, is an almost impossible task to achieve in a short span of time). My passion for running also helped to finalise on a few villages that we would like to live in or get a site in. We ended up physically visiting more than 60 city halls (locally known as a Rathaus) and enrolling ourselves to be informed when they announce new extensions or layouts. During this phase, we were fortunate enough to find out that there is an internet portal where available sites are listed https://www.baupilot.com/. This information was very helpful. With one click of a button one can subscribe to a specific Gemeinde (Village/Municipality) or a plot that they are interested in. Finally after 6-7 months of trying out all these above-mentioned options, we were provided with an option for a plot from the Stadt Heidenheim. After a few legal procedures, this land was registered in our name. The 1st pre-condition was met. One of the many conditions from the Stadt Heidenheim was to construct the house within 3 years. It looks like a pretty long period, but believe me when I say this,this is definitely not so when you start to plan things out. We had a couple of options in deciding on the kind of house we would want to construct. These came with their own set of advantages and disadvantages:

1. Stein Haus (Brick House)
2. FertigHaus (Wooden Haus)

Companies that are in the business of building Steinhäuser are very few and their business model is slightly different and they prefer to sell their customers both a land and house which didn’t work in our favour. We understood that option B was better for our preferences. Again there are numerous companies in the market that manufacture these wooden houses. With a list of factors like price, quality and customer satisfaction working in their favour, we decided to go with Schwoerer Haus. This company is in the business for quite some time and is a local company. Once we had finalized them, the next step was to decide on an architect. Schwoerer Haus supported us by providing us with a couple of names they work with from time to time. We were very keen to design our home based upon the Indian vaastu principles. It was a bit hard at the beginning to explain why certain things were supposed to be in a certain way. But with several rounds of discussions we were able to finalize the building plan and we had to submit the building application for approval with the Stadt and it took us a few months to get the building permit.

Once this second major step was completed, we started to work with Schwoerer Haus in order to plan the interiors of the house. At the same time, we had to shortlist the companies that could take on the excavation work on the site. Luckily, Schwoerer Haus’ support during his process greatly benefited us. Finally, after a tedious one year, the four walls of our future home were finally standing. But it took them another 6 months to deliver the house to us. So, long story short, we received our house in the month of October 2022. We are,ofcourse still in the process of making this house our home.This is just a very short summary of our experiences here, I do hope this can provide some insight for the people who want a house of their own in Germany.