Friday 1 May 2015

Post, post, post...

At the end of last week we received seven letters in one day regarding the build.

The first two were from the German tax office, one for myself and one for Steffi.  This was our tax bill for purchasing the land set at 5% but split between us 2.5% each.  It seems they are very quick to request tax payment here -  not a surprise! We paid this on the same day as we needed to clear the bill before we can officially be entered in the land registry.

The next two letters came from the county court in Maulbronn, again one for me and one for Steffi. These were simply to let us know the land registry has entered us as provisional land owners.

The fifth letter came from Tiefenbronn council as Registered post. We assumed this would be another invoice but it turned out to be a notice that one of our neighbours has applied for planning permission and that we have a certain amount of time to review the plans in their office and to submit any complaints.

The sixth letter was from IngDiBa requesting that we send the outstanding documents such as the notice of payment for the land, that the Notary hasn't yet sent us.

The seventh and largest of the envelopes was from the land surveyor containing 20 pages of information the architect and groundworkers need to plan and build the cellar.  They explained how they drilled two holes in opposite corners of where the house will stand to check the substance.  They only managed to get 3.5m down before they hit a solid sandstone layer.  This is good news as we were told there my be limestone under the land which can potentially lead to sink holes, and we only need to dig 3m deep to build the cellar. The rest of the layers were mostly clay and some silt. Unfortunately there is more than average water in the soil so we need to add an additional layer of damp-proofing to the walls which adds around €3,000 and we should plan that we may need to pump out any excess water.  Luckily we planned in some extra costs to cover this.

We were up at the site last weekend to look how things are progressing and were surprised to see that two houses are already half built, amazing how quickly things move once you get started.



You can see one of the new houses in the background on the right.  They have a brick facade, unusual for this part of the world.

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