Architect's house in Pforzheim - Offer too expensive?

Budget was actually 400k.

According to his cost estimate, our architect comes to 460k including outdoor facilities and garage.

Did your architect know your budget? The planned house is "huge," has extensive equipment (three showers alone), and you yourself say that garage and outdoor facilities are supposed to be included. Of course that costs a lot of money.

How would you assess the offers?

Realistic.

Some GCs can calculate that well - including the ancillary construction costs. Our estimate was almost spot on.

I don't think the offers differ that much now: 410 + ancillary construction costs versus around 500K including ancillary construction costs. I think that should be the normal range. I also don't find the prices completely off.

If I extrapolate our house price from 2013 to your plot size, I already come into the region of 500K including additional costs and economical landscaping...

Our provider was by far not the most expensive - but also not the cheapest. Maybe there could have been another 15-20K savings, but we wanted a provider who also included the landscaping and so on.

But what really surprises me: You’ve actually planned a generous house and then this narrow access / corridor as a passage into the living room past the sofa? We have just over 4m depth in the living room and I wouldn’t want to push the sofa another meter forward just to walk behind it. That’s going to be pretty tight.

Basically, I find the space distribution rather unfavorable, but you have certainly thought that through well.

Hello neighbor.

You are building a huge house but the children's rooms are small.

If you go for a walk in the [Tiergarten] and talk to a few builders, you can get a feeling of what is coming your way.

I would say 340k is cheap but with your size that will be the bottom limit.

Cheaper might also be possible but then the quality suffers.

As a layperson, I can only compare it to our project of a similar size. Accordingly, I can only imagine the 410,000 in a simple (even rather simplest) version.

In addition:

[*]Building permit and insurance
[*]Furniture to fill the 180 sqm, lamps, kitchen, fireplace

[*]Carpets, pictures, flowers, curtains, decorative stuff, etc.
[*]Outdoor facilities and plants for the garden

Even in a simple version, I would not dare to do it under a 500k budget.

I personally find the children's rooms okay at 12 sqm. Are you planning for 3 children or do you already have that many? Otherwise, I always find it very inconvenient to hide the main bathroom with a bathtub in the farthest corner. Especially small children tend to bathe rather than shower. And having to drag all the kids' stuff (clothes, towels, toys) around there feels not so ideal to me. I am a fan of short distances.

Otherwise, I find the house price acceptable for the size. We pay about 230k and have 168 sqm WITHOUT a basement, garage, etc. If you extrapolate that, it could add up.

Nice design...but anyone offering 4xxk there...probably assumes that you can top up well and heavily

Otherwise...just paint the basement (we did that too) and you've already saved a lot..