Architect or construction company to draw the plan? Costs?

Hello experienced construction experts,
we are currently in the initial planning phase for our single-family house. Construction is scheduled to begin in spring 2015.
At the moment, we are working on planning our floor plan and we have also found a couple of architects who design single-family houses that very much match our ideas.
We have already contacted them. They would draw the plan for us, but they cannot take over the construction management because they are too far away, meaning we would have to find a construction company locally anyway.
Is it financially worthwhile to hire an architect at all? What does it approximately cost if they draw the plan for us? Do you have any experience with this?

Thank you very much for helpful answers!

Oh dear, I'll go get the popcorn now.

Oh dear, I'm already getting the popcorn out.

Thank you very much for the constructive answer... It really helped me a lot!

Please, you're welcome.

Who else should draw the drafts if not an architect?

The prices for architects are based on the HOAI. There is some room for negotiation, but not much.

The decisive factor is probably the phases for which you commission the architects. That determines the scope of services and the price.

Additionally, there is the construction value of the house, which also determines the price of the architect.

Are you any wiser now?

Hello,

Is it financially worthwhile to hire an architect at all? How much does it roughly cost if they draw the plan for us?

Regarding the possible costs, you have already received an answer.

I assume you mean a licensed architect versus a drafting office of a provider. It is worthwhile whenever – if you don’t want to realize your construction project with an architect anyway – there is a difficult building envelope/plot to plan/build on. If it is an everyday plan, like those found in every new development area, you will usually find what you need among the standardized floor plans of the providers.

The costs of an external architect should be considered additional incidental construction costs when awarding the construction contract later to a provider of your choice, because your favorite will have to transfer the architect's designs to their in-house system. Based on this, they will commission their structural engineer and also create the execution plans for the trades based on this. Therefore, costs for the architecture will arise for them; meaning, they will not credit you for your architect costs or only in very few cases.

There are quite a few builders who gladly accept these additional costs because their "own" floor plan is important to them. So you should first decide for yourself how you want to proceed.

Rhenish regards

As the construction expert already wrote. If you have a drawing made by an architect and then subsequently run to a general contractor (GU/GÜ), you often do not save anything with the latter. We did it the same way ourselves. An architect designed and planned our house. With this planning, we then approached various general contractors to obtain offers for turnkey implementation. The general contractor ultimately basically redid the drawing 1:1 and calculated and executed the statics etc. and everything around it. Unfortunately, I cannot tell you anything about the costs of the architect, as it was a favor. We only had the advantage with this approach that we had "our" floor plan and, due to the specifications, could obtain somewhat comparable offers from the different general contractors.