An average of 27 months passes between the building permit and the completion of the house. During that time almost everything is decided on the plot that later makes the outdoor area expensive or straightforward: where the site road ran, how high the patio door sits above the ground, whether a duct reaches the fence line and where the roof water goes. A landscaping firm that is only asked after the move-in works against decisions that were poured in concrete long ago. This article shows how to build a dedicated page for new-build outdoor areas, which four fields the enquiry form needs, and why photographs of a shell-construction site serve a different purpose than pictures of finished gardens.
Key takeaways
- In the first half of 2026, building permits were issued for 126,300 dwellings, 15.1 percent more than a year earlier (Federal Statistical Office). Every approved dwelling in owner-occupied housing is an outdoor area that will be needed before long.
- For residential buildings completed in 2025, an average of 27 months passed from permit to completion. That is the time window in which an enquiry arrives early enough to still change something.
- At the end of 2025, 760,700 dwellings were approved but not yet completed, 307,200 of them already under construction. The stock of future work is therefore counted, not estimated.
- Access, levels, ducting and drainage are fixed during shell construction. A page that starts from the building phase rather than the trade reaches the client while those four points are still movable.
- Four mandatory fields make new-build enquiries sortable: handover date, plot size, state of the ground and width of the access. The handover date determines the quarter in which you follow up.
Why new builds are an audience of their own
Permit figures are pointing upwards again. In the first half of 2026, building permits were issued in Germany for 126,300 dwellings (Federal Statistical Office) in new and existing buildings. Compared with the first half of 2025 that is an increase of 15.1 percent (Federal Statistical Office). For a landscaping firm this is not an economic bulletin but a forecast of work: around every approved dwelling in owner-occupied housing there is a plot that has to be finished before long, and by someone who is already known at that point.
The more relevant subset appears in the same report. Among newly erected residential buildings, permits for single-family houses rose in the first half of 2026 to 24,000 (Federal Statistical Office), an increase of 12.7 percent on the same period a year earlier. The completion statistics point the other way: across the whole of 2025, 41,800 single-family houses (Federal Statistical Office) were completed, 23.3 percent fewer than in the previous year. The two absolute figures cover periods of different length — six months against twelve — and therefore cannot be set against each other directly. What is comparable is the direction: permits are rising, completions are falling. What is approved now becomes an outdoor area in the years ahead.
That reservoir can be counted. The construction overhang, meaning dwellings approved but not yet completed, stood at 760,700 dwellings (Federal Statistical Office) at the end of 2025 and thus at the level of the previous year. Of these, 307,200 dwellings (Federal Statistical Office) were already under construction. That is the part where a handover date is due within a manageable period, and with it the question of who puts the ground around the house in order.
The industry statistics show that the effort for this audience pays off. In 2025, close to 57 percent (BGL) of total turnover in landscaping and sports ground construction came from private gardens, in euro terms 6.32 billion (BGL). Within that segment, the new-build client is the case where the whole first installation is awarded in one go: excavation, access, paving, patio, fence, irrigation, lawn and planting. In an existing garden the same scope typically spreads over years and several firms.
Two statistics that do not count the same thing
The time window between permit and move-in
The length of that window is measured as well. For residential buildings completed in 2025, the average processing time — the period from the issuing of the permit to completion — was 27 months (Federal Statistical Office). In 2020 it was still 20 months (Federal Statistical Office). So the window exists, and it has grown longer in recent years. For a website that means: between the moment someone first searches for outdoor areas and new builds and the moment the excavator arrives, there are more than two years in which you can be found several times.
Five points in the build where the outdoor area is decided
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The permit is issued
The building permit has been granted, the plot belongs to the client, the financing is in place. Thoughts are on the kitchen, the bathroom and the heating. Whoever is visible with a new-build page at this point is asked first later on.
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The site is set up
Site road, crane standing area and material storage determine which part of the plot ends up compacted. A word from you at this stage costs nothing and saves excavation work later.
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The shell is up
The levels are poured: patio door, light wells, front entrance. From here on, the height of the future patio is an arithmetic problem and no longer a design question.
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Fit-out is running
The outdoor area comes into view, usually together with whatever is left of the budget. This is where it is decided whether the work happens in one go or in sections over two years.
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Handover and move-in
The move is the trigger: mud at the entrance, no fence, no solid access. Anyone who has not enquired by this point enquires now — and typically meets a calendar that has been booked out since January.
Three of these five points lie well before the move-in, and at each of them something can be offered that becomes more expensive later. The usual sequence looks different: the enquiry arrives in the spring after the move, together with everyone else's, and meets a fully booked season. A page that starts from the building phase rather than the trade moves exactly that moment forward. How enquiries can be spread across the year is described in Steering seasonal enquiries.
| Point in time | What is still movable | What the retrofit costs |
|---|---|---|
| Before work starts | Position of the site road, protection of trees and topsoil, width of the access | Replacing or deep-loosening soil that has been driven over for two years |
| Shell construction | Level reference for patio and entrance, light wells, cellar stairs | Additional steps, retaining walls or made-up ground added afterwards |
| Before the excavation is backfilled | Ducts for lighting, gate drives and irrigation, a water point in the garden | Breaking open finished surfaces, or cables and pipes laid visibly |
| Fit-out | Drainage of roof and yard surfaces, removal of remaining excavated soil | Separate journeys, disposal at the day rate, a second machine transport |
The right-hand column is the sales argument, and it works without promising figures. What replacing compacted soil costs depends on the individual case; that it is usually required when heavy vehicles have driven across the future lawn for two years can be explained to anyone. How excavated soil and disposal are separated cleanly in a quote and shown transparently is set out in Excavated soil and disposal in the quote.
Four points that are fixed during shell construction
A service page for new builds needs a reason why someone should enquire before moving in. That reason is four technical decisions that are taken during shell construction and can afterwards be changed only with effort. Naming them on the page does not sell a service, it sells a deadline — and deadlines produce enquiries more reliably than adjectives do.
Access and site road
Wherever vehicles stand and drive during construction, the soil is compacted. If the later access runs along the same line, that is an advantage. If it runs elsewhere, soil replacement is added as an item that could have been avoided beforehand.
Levels and connection points
The top edge of the patio door, the position of the light wells and the height of the entrance determine how many steps the patio needs and whether a retaining wall becomes necessary. After the shell is up, this is an arithmetic problem with fixed boundary conditions.
Ducting and water
Garden lighting, a drive on the yard gate, a water point at the bed: each of them needs a line. Before the excavation is backfilled that is an open trench, afterwards it means breaking open finished surfaces.
Drainage of the surfaces
Where roof, yard and path water goes is decided together with the layout of the underground drains. Planning infiltration only after the move-in means planning around pipes that are already in the ground, and losing design freedom.
These four points are at the same time the structure of the page. Each gets a paragraph, a picture and one sentence saying until when it stays movable. Infiltration has a service page of its own that goes deeper technically: Rainwater infiltration: swales, soakaways and tanks. The same applies to surfacing, where the sub-base is the topic: Explaining paving work: sub-base, falls, edging.
Soil protection is not a side note
The service page first installation for new builds
On many landscaping websites the new-build client does not appear at all. There is a page on paving, one on garden maintenance, one on ponds — structured by trade, that is, by the way the firm itself thinks. Clients think in building phases. They do not search for paving work, they search for what happens to the plot once the shell is up. The new-build service page is the translation between the two views; how a page for private gardens is built alongside it is shown in Websites for private garden builders.
Entry through the building phase
The page does not open with services but with a question: which phase is your build in? Four answers — planning, shell, fit-out, occupied — lead to four short sections. Visitors recognise themselves in one of them and read on there, instead of translating a list of services.
What is still being decided now
For each phase, the page lists the points that are currently movable: access and soil protection during planning, levels and ducting during shell construction, drainage and excavation volumes during fit-out, execution window and date after occupation. That is the part that triggers the enquiry.
Scope in the order of execution
Then the scope of work, but in the order of execution rather than alphabetically: excavation, rough grading, services, surfacing, edging, fencing, fine grading, planting. That is also the structure of the later quote and makes partial awards easier to negotiate.
Pictures of the shell-construction site
Two or three pairs of images showing the starting condition: excavation pit, crane tracks, what is left of the spoil. Next to them the result at the same address from the same position. Finished garden pictures alone do not answer the client's question.
A form with a time reference
At the end, a form that asks for the handover date rather than the preferred date. The handover date is in the building contract and is therefore a figure that can be looked up instead of guessed. Everything else follows from it.
The page does not open with services but with a question: which phase is your build in? Four answers — planning, shell, fit-out, occupied — lead to four short sections. Visitors recognise themselves in one of them and read on there, instead of translating a list of services.
For each phase, the page lists the points that are currently movable: access and soil protection during planning, levels and ducting during shell construction, drainage and excavation volumes during fit-out, execution window and date after occupation. That is the part that triggers the enquiry.
Then the scope of work, but in the order of execution rather than alphabetically: excavation, rough grading, services, surfacing, edging, fencing, fine grading, planting. That is also the structure of the later quote and makes partial awards easier to negotiate.
Two or three pairs of images showing the starting condition: excavation pit, crane tracks, what is left of the spoil. Next to them the result at the same address from the same position. Finished garden pictures alone do not answer the client's question.
At the end, a form that asks for the handover date rather than the preferred date. The handover date is in the building contract and is therefore a figure that can be looked up instead of guessed. Everything else follows from it.
This page replaces none of the existing service pages; it sits alongside them and links in both directions. The surfacing section links to the page on paving and path construction, the planting section to the page on garden design. What such a structure looks like as a whole is shown by the services overview and the page Websites for paving and path builders.
The sentence that carries the page
The form that asks for the date
An enquiry form for new builds needs different fields from one for garden maintenance. The usual fields — name, address, message — produce an enquiry that has to be qualified by telephone afterwards. Four additional fields save that call. Which fields pre-qualify in general is set out in An enquiry form that qualifies; for new builds, the following details are added.
- Handover date of the house as month and year, not as free text. The execution window follows from it.
- Plot size in square metres, with the follow-up question of how much of it is built on.
- State of the ground: spoil still on site, spoil removed, ground roughly graded.
- Access for machines: width at the narrowest point and whether a neighbouring area may be used.
- Trades already awarded, so it is clear whether the patio already sits with the shell contractor.
- Existing plans: the open-space plan from the building application, an own sketch, or none of these.
- Desired scope: the full first installation in one go, or sections spread over two years.
- Availability on site, because the site visit takes place on the building site and not in the living room.
Four of these eight fields are mandatory, the rest are optional: date, area, condition and access are answered in a minute, while everything further costs the enquirer time and therefore stays voluntary. Technically this is a handful of lines in the form definition, and the last block is the valuable one.
{
"fields": [
{ "name": "handover", "type": "month", "required": true,
"label": "Handover date of the house" },
{ "name": "area", "type": "number", "required": true, "unit": "m2",
"label": "Plot size" },
{ "name": "condition", "type": "select", "required": true,
"options": ["spoil on site", "spoil removed", "roughly graded"] },
{ "name": "access", "type": "number", "required": true, "unit": "m",
"label": "Width at the narrowest point" },
{ "name": "plan", "type": "file", "required": false,
"label": "Open-space plan from the building application" }
],
"bucket": {
"months_to_handover": {
"0-6": "schedule",
"7-18": "hold",
"19+": "follow-up"
}
}
}The handover date automatically decides which bucket the enquiry falls into. Enquiries with a handover in the next six months go straight into scheduling, anything between seven and eighteen months is held and picked up again in the right quarter, and anything beyond that gets a dated reminder. An enquiry that brings nothing today becomes an entry in the calendar of the winter after next. How such a form is designed and connected is shown by the enquiry form for landscaping firms.
Photographs of the shell-construction site show something else
Almost every landscaping website carries pictures of finished gardens. They show the result and answer the question of taste. The new-build client has a different question: can this firm deal with what is lying around here right now? Their plot is a building site with crane tracks, spoil heaps and site fencing. A picture of a finished terraced-house garden does not answer that; a picture of the same site before the work does. How a gallery for this is built and maintained is shown on the portfolio gallery page.
- The plot before work starts, taken from the position that will later produce the result photograph as well.
- The site at shell stage with the crane standing area and the tracks the vehicles have left behind.
- The spoil before it is carted away, with a scale in the picture so the volume can be judged.
- The rough grading after the first working day, because this interim state shows what one day of machine work achieves.
- The ducts laid in the open trench, because this detail stays invisible in the finished garden.
- The result from the same position as the first picture, without a wide angle and without evening light.
The effort is small if it is planned in with the site survey: six shots on the phone, from fixed positions, the same ones at every visit. The return is a picture sequence that cannot be reproduced without having been at the same place two years earlier. How images are worked into the page structure and which formats the loading time tolerates is described under Websites for landscaping firms.
Sorting enquiries by time window
The second benefit is not on the client's side but in your own planning. New-build enquiries arrive with a date the client knows and that is written into the building contract. That allows an enquiry to be filed long before it is ready for execution. Anyone holding twenty enquiries in summer with handovers in the coming winter plans January differently from someone waiting by the phone in January.
| Handover date | Execution window | What is clarified at first contact |
|---|---|---|
| Autumn of the current year | Frost-free days in winter, full execution in spring | Whether access and rough grading can be brought forward |
| Winter | Spring of the same year | Whether the spoil is carted away before the winter |
| Spring | Late summer and autumn of the same year | Whether part of the area has to be walkable for the move-in |
| Summer | Autumn of the same year or spring of the next | Whether the lawn is laid in autumn or only in spring |
The last row leads to a recurring follow-up question, and it has a technical answer rather than a matter of taste. Which of the two options works when, and what each of them demands in aftercare, is compared in New lawns: turf and seed compared. For the website this means the new-build page needs a section on timing of its own, one that still holds up when the preferred date cannot be met.
What else has to be settled on the plot
Two topics come up regularly on new builds as soon as the surfaces are in place. The first is the boundary: the distance to be kept for trees and hedges is governed by the neighbour law of the individual states, and the question belongs in the conversation before anything is planted — the article Boundary distances for trees and hedges sets that out. The second is the upkeep of the new surfaces: within a single season, weeds grow in the joints of freshly laid paving, and what is permitted against them is covered in Offering weed control: law, methods, intervals. Both work well as follow-on services, raised at the first meeting and offered in the second year.
The new-build page is therefore not a one-off but the entry point to a chain: first installation, boundary distances, maintenance, later replanting and irrigation. The firm that was visible two years before the move-in comes to mind first with each of those questions. The firm that is only found after the move negotiates over what is left of the budget. The difference between the two is one page, four mandatory form fields and six photographs per site — plus the knowledge that an average of 27 months lies between the permit and completion.
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