A good 25,000 people decided to build a prefabricated house last year.

That was almost every fourth person wanting to build.

The proportion of prefabricated houses in relation to the number of private building permits has risen to exactly 23.1 percent – ​​higher than ever before.

Bernd Freytag

Business correspondent Rhein-Neckar-Saar based in Mainz.

  • Follow I follow

The order books of the companies are correspondingly well filled, the production of the approximately 50 German suppliers with their 15,000 employees can hardly keep up.

And yet the mood in the industry is gloomy.

Because one of their most important purchase arguments for the prefabricated house is now threatening to suffocate the companies: the fixed price guarantee.

In addition to the good insulation effect of the wooden houses and the comparatively short "construction time", the fixed prices have been advertised by the manufacturers for years as a significant competitive advantage over conventionally built houses.

However, the rapid increase in the price of many building materials, above all wood, is making the calculation more and more of a risky game for companies.

It now takes a year from ordering to delivery, even in the prefabricated house sector.

However, if the companies sacrificed the voluntary price guarantee and pushed for "price escalation clauses", one of their most important purchase arguments would be lost.

The Austrian prefabricated house association has already “suspended” its price guarantee “code of honor” introduced in 1979 in view of the rising wood prices.

Scala Haus, one of the best-known providers in the country, recently filed for the opening of insolvency proceedings with reference to the "undercalculated sales prices".

It's not that far in Germany yet.

The situation is challenging, but the medium-sized industry has established supply chains and is experienced in procurement, says Achim Hannott from the Federal Association of German Prefabricated Construction.

The promise still stands: "Our home construction companies are still offering fixed prices."

Further price adjustments possible

In order to counteract the pressure on margins and, in the worst case, to avoid losses, the prices for new orders are likely to continue to rise.

“In order to be able to compensate for part of the rising material costs, we made price adjustments for new contracts last year.

Since the overall situation is still not easing, further price adjustments are possible,” said Klaus-Dieter Schwendemann, Head of Marketing at WeberHaus, when asked by the FAZ

According to the Federal Statistical Office, the price of “solid structural timber” increased by 77.3 percent last year.

Significantly more wood is required to build a prefabricated house than for conventional stone houses.

According to SchwörerHaus, up to 35 cubic meters of wood are needed for a smaller prefabricated house made of wood with 130 square meters of living space.

Four truckloads of logs would be processed for this.

Proportion of new buildings almost doubled

The fixed price squeeze is causing problems for companies at a time when things only seemed to be going up.

The real estate boom, the desire of many builders for sustainable building materials and last but not least the tight capacities of the competing construction industry have given the prefab builders considerable momentum.

Quite a few companies are reporting the most successful year ever for 2021.

In fact, the prefabricated house builders have successfully shed their image as cheap homes, they have been experiencing increasing demand for years.

The proportion of prefabricated houses in new buildings has almost doubled in the past ten years.

Traditionally, however, there is a greater spread in Germany.

Prefabricated houses have always found the greatest acceptance in regions with a high proportion of forest.

Baden-Württemberg claims the top position, where the prefabricated house quota reached almost 40 percent in 2021.

Hessen follows with a share of 37 percent.