Why build?

I've been drawing my dream house for as long as I can remember. As a young adult I developed a secret addiction to architecture documentaries and home development and improvement shows. Over the years my ideas and tastes started to come together into a grand design of my dream home. However as time passed there was the growing realization that, like the Aston Martin in the driveway, the house would remain a dream.

This is not going to be the realization of that grand dream but I hope that it will be the realization of a more modest but equally important one. Now that I have a permanent and stable job the plan was to finally stop paying rent and buy a house. I live in North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous part of Germany and with the interest rates so low the normally frugal Germans are busy investing in property. With my modest means I am at the crowded end of the property ladder, the few houses that do come onto the market are quickly snapped up, usually well above the asking price.

So I was left with the option of going for something much smaller or finding a plot and building on it using one of the numerous house building firms that exist in Germany. The financial risks associated with building are significant, but it's the only way I will be able to afford what I want and so I will have to accept an element of risk and minimize it where possible.