Contents page 1 — In Hiddenhausen they lure young people into old houses page 2 — new construction areas costs a lot of money page 3 — Hiddenhausen encourages emulation On a page

read It was days, because you have not believed that they would experience the to enter into home ownership yet. Especially not in this house. Here, Melanie and Jörg Schneider, both are 38 and 40 years old. Five years you have been looking for over three years rebuilt. Since a couple of months, you’ll be finally with her little daughter in the countryside, in a beautifully renovated old building. The bedroom has a view of the nearby Wiehengebirge mountains, and can walk to the old village centre of Eilshausen, to the bakery, the ice cream parlor and to the next supermarket. The Best part is, so Melanie Schneider finds that the may parents-in-law just like that in house Slippers over there, because you’ll be inclined.

From the house in their home municipality Hiddenhausen, both of East Westphalia had long dreamed of. “And we also have looking for it for ages”, they say. It was not easy to find a family suitable home, even up here on the very edge of North Rhine-Westphalia. But that was less to do with your claims.

No new areas of the city more

“A bit green, it should be” and “large enough for at least three and preferably not more than 400,000 Euro”, which were their ideas. Of course, they also thought over the Build, you have the right property for them was missing but still. Just one you couldn’t imagine from the beginning: “one Of these catalogue houses, on newly-created land in the middle of the turning hammer.” Instead, they wanted “a house with charm”, and it is rather in the middle of the village as at the end of the world.

Schneider family in the renovated old building © Nadine Oberhuber for TIME, ONLINE

you have Found “an old figurines”, as it’s called here. Are the house plans of 1881, but it is a good 50 years older. Has helped the municipality of Hiddenhausen, showing no new areas of the city more – but aware of the purchase of age and older houses promotes. The house of the cutter is a large eat-in kitchen, in which there were a few years ago an outhouse and a goat barn.

The family had to rebuilt the old house completely, because the position: structural designer almost fell into a swoon when she saw the roof. Only a handful of walls remained standing. The Rest is made with old materials is almost completely new and remodeled. “In the meantime, we have asked ourselves: Will this ever be finished? And why are we doing this?”

What the search was but hard, the tight housing market in your Region. In the case of multiple objects, you came to the course because it was willing to several other Purchase. The family of Jörg Schneider was born in Hiddenhausen, a 20-Thousand-inhabitants-village in the city triangle between Herford, Minden and Osnabrück. Melanie comes from the direct neighboring community Close.