House renovation: Costs and step-by-step instructions
If you dream of your own four walls, you are usually faced with the following question at the beginning: New or old building? If you decide to build a house, you can design it entirely according to your individual wishes and ideas. However, new construction usually comes with high costs and a long waiting period for this to happen. For many people, the choice therefore falls on the second alternative – they simply buy an existing house. But beware: with the purchase price it is usually not done, especially in older buildings.
Renovate your house: Here's how you should proceed
About 50 percent of the total stock of real estate in Germany is old buildings. Roughly speaking, this applies to houses that were built more than 50 years ago – i.e. before 1970. However, you should not underestimate the renovation effort of younger houses either. While you often have to reckon with structural problems such as rising damp, poor insulation and thin walls in pre-war buildings, it is not uncommon for more recent houses to have structural-chemical weak points. For example, the harmful substance asbestos was still permitted until 1993 and was thus used liberally in the construction of numerous houses.