Baufritz

[Susan2024]

Hello,

Have been looking at Baufritz. Has anyone any experience of building with their prefab super homes? Would be curious to know how they were to work with and what the end product was like. Do you recommend them?

 

[ToughButterCup]

Welcome.

I'm not sure if anyone here (on this board) has any experience of Baufritz: as I understand it they are a "Turnkey" company. Our focus is more on doing it on your own. 

Perhaps you could ask the company if they have any existing clients who are willing to talk to prospective customers. 

[jack]

14 hours ago, Susan2024 said:

Hello,

Have been looking at Baufritz. Has anyone any experience of building with their prefab super homes? Would be curious to know how they were to work with and what the end product was like. Do you recommend them?

 

 

Sorry Susan, at least from a search of the word "Baufritz", no-one's posted about them before.
 

Still, it's possible someone might have had interactions with them but not mentioned it.

 

Also, BuildHub will still be a useful place to get information about everything Baufritz doesn't do (if you use them). You can get independent feedback on your house plans, for example, or about landscaping, planning, etc.

 

Good luck.

[Nickfromwales]

Well, they celebrated building their 100th home in the UK in 2023, but that is a tiny percentage. My marketing team discovered that there are somewhere between 15,000 to 18,000 UK self builds per annum in the UK (domestic 1-offs) as an 'average' (albeit these were quite difficult statistics to accurately ascertain) so that's the way I gauge their 'presence'.

 

Might I ask what the attraction to this particular company is? I am indifferent btw, just more curious than anything. What size home are you building?

[Gone West]

17 hours ago, Susan2024 said:

Have been looking at Baufritz.

We also looked at Baufritz, back in 2009, when we were considering what we were going to build. We liked the look a great deal, and we thought the wood fibre insulation was interesting but unfortunately it was outside our budget. Only the price put us off 🥲.

[gravelld]

Google:

site:buildhub.org.uk Baufritz

 

[Deborah Waters]

My Husband and I have built a Baufritz house and it has been completed just over a year now.  We chose a turnkey option although Baufritz are happy to provide just the shell.

From start to finish, I can honestly say that that I cannot praise them enough.

I designed the house based loosely on another Baufritz house. The architect was happy to take my lead and make the plans work. At every stage, their can-do attitude ensured that any problem was solved swiftly with the minimum fuss. 
When considering a self build, our biggest worry was the budget getting away.

Baufritz gave us an initial price based on a number of questions and options. Once we decided to go ahead and obtained planning permission, we were flown out to Germany to see the factory and chose the internal fittings. The final price is then set depending on our choices which was pretty close to the original figure. That price is agreed and fixed. We paid not a penny more despite materials prices soaring between signing and the build. Baufritz dealt with demolition of our bungalow, groundwork’s and all preparations. They insist on using their own contractors in order to guarantee standards and scheduling. We were given a detailed schedule and they completed it 6 weeks earlier than estimated.

As somebody has said, Baufritz are not cheap but you can see where every penny goes. The quality of the materials are top draw. Skirtings and doors are solid oak the quality of workmanship is second to none. Nothing was left to chance and on the rare occasion a hitch arose, everyone, no matter which trade, worked together to deal with the problem. 
The German work ethic blew me away. Arriving at 7.30am, they would plan what had to be achieved that day and would work until the scheduled tasks were completed, no matter what that time was. Nobody left the site before 5pm.

how does the house perform? Without heating, the super insulated rooms and heat recovery system maintains a steady 19-22 degrees.  We have an air source heat pump which gets little use.
We installed solar panels with battery storage, so once the batteries are charged, surplus power is sold to the grid providing credit to take us through the winter months.
Our plan was to build a super insulated, easy to maintain home to take us into our retirement and we are very happy with the result.

[Alan Ambrose]

Yeah, we have some friends with one, and it looks good quality. I imagine it is a low anxiety route compared with other methods, but presumably with a hefty price premium?

[Gus Potter]

On 08/05/2025 at 21:36, Deborah Waters said:

My Husband and I have built a Baufritz house and it has been completed just over a year now.

Welcome to BH by the way Deborah.

 

That is glowing report.

16 hours ago, Alan Ambrose said:

Yeah, we have some friends with one, and it looks good quality. I imagine it is a low anxiety route compared with other methods, but presumably with a hefty price premium?

Agree. But there is always an inherant risk about buying from abroad. If things start to go wrong then there may not be a local resource you can call up to fix things on site in the heat of battle... like phone a friend. If you are on a tight programme then it's a balancing excercise.. do we go local or not.

[Deborah Waters]

The aftercare service is brilliant. We had all had slight issue with a door locking mechanism and Baufritz were straight onto it. Along with a good customer care service, Baufritz supply a complete spares and materials directory along with care folder and troubleshooting manual. Buying from abroad need not be troubling when every question is answered in the comprehensive manual compiled on your individual build

[Alan Ambrose]

As other here on BH have noted though - we British have a generalised rose-tinted view of 'German engineering'. Some of it is justified, some of it is definitely not. The German wife of a friend (they live in Berlin) tells me that the red tape in local government is outrageous and the amount of pen and paper and fax machine usage is regrettable.

Edited Wednesday at 16:54 by Alan Ambrose

[-rick-]

An aside: the German justified fear of the secret police (causing resistance to digitisation, credit cards and strict privacy laws) may be a hindrence to efficiency but I suspect without them the rest of us would be stuck with privacy laws much more in line with the US than we have.

 

I know people think of it as German engineering but I think the reputation is more from having the Mittelstand as a supported and succesful part of the econmy. Lots of smaller companies competing with each other vs a small number of huge companies helps improve overall quality and service. Can always be unlucky though and more recently China seems to be eating their lunch so might be so good going forward.

[Roger440]

On 10/05/2025 at 23:03, Gus Potter said:

Welcome to BH by the way Deborah.

 

That is glowing report.

Agree. But there is always an inherant risk about buying from abroad. If things start to go wrong then there may not be a local resource you can call up to fix things on site in the heat of battle... like phone a friend. If you are on a tight programme then it's a balancing excercise.. do we go local or not.

 

I think that is maybe to miss the point a touch.

 

Their way of working is to cover all the bases and have solutions before they ever set out to the job. They wont need to "fix things up on site".

 

Ive worked with a fair few German companies over the last 30 years. Whilst they are not all perfect, they have a very different outlook and approach to us. In most respects, a better one.

[Roger440]

11 hours ago, Deborah Waters said:

The aftercare service is brilliant. We had all had slight issue with a door locking mechanism and Baufritz were straight onto it. Along with a good customer care service, Baufritz supply a complete spares and materials directory along with care folder and troubleshooting manual. Buying from abroad need not be troubling when every question is answered in the comprehensive manual compiled on your individual build

 

Can you imagine getting a spares catalogue , materials directory and trouble shooting manual from your average UK house builder!!!

[MikeSharp01]

20 minutes ago, Roger440 said:

Can you imagine getting a spares catalogue , materials directory and trouble shoting manual from your average UK house builder!!!

I am slowly compiling one for our build and a collection of spares.

[Nickfromwales]

1 hour ago, Roger440 said:

 

Can you imagine getting a spares catalogue , materials directory and trouble shooting manual from your average UK house builder!!!

😆 some wee just came out.

[BotusBuild]

16 hours ago, -rick- said:

An aside: the German justified fear of the secret police (causing resistance to digitisation, credit cards and strict privacy laws) may be a hindrence to efficiency but I suspect without them the rest of us would be stuck with privacy laws much more in line with the US than we have.

You imply the US have strict privacy laws. You are kidding aren't you? They have the worst regulations related to privacy in the developed world.

[jack]

50 minutes ago, BotusBuild said:

You imply the US have strict privacy laws. You are kidding aren't you? They have the worst regulations related to privacy in the developed world.

 

I took the opposite from @-rick-'s comment:

 

"without [the Germans] the rest of us would be stuck with [worse] privacy laws much more in line with the US than we have."

[BotusBuild]

On 02/07/2025 at 18:17, -rick- said:

(causing resistance to digitisation, credit cards and strict privacy laws)

It was this bit in brackets that caused my response. Was it the secret police resistance to these or the German population? 🙂 

[-rick-]

17 minutes ago, BotusBuild said:

It was this bit in brackets that caused my response. Was it the secret police resistance to these or the German population? 🙂 

The German population has a lot of experience with secret police from their history (East Germans it's often history they lived, West Germans history their parents/grand parents told them about). Obviously plenty of other countries have similar histories with secret police and the political systems they operate in but the Germans more than most have historically focussed on avoiding a repeat. One of the ways that manifests is in a much more privacy focused approach. They are the among the main drivers of European privacy law and have historically been the ones to block privacy invading proposals.