HOAI II. Construction plan costs. Can the architect bill according to HOAI?

Hello,
our general contractor issued us a proper invoice for the preparation of the construction plans until the submission of the building application. Background: we decided to build with another general contractor, but always told him this, and now, after more than a year, the hefty invoice arrives. He billed according to HOAI II. Now my question: can he apply HOAI, since this is actually only for architects and he is a trained master bricklayer. I asked other general contractors; this service costs a maximum of €4500.

Good morning,

first of all - except for , no one is allowed to provide legal advice here; this is the exclusive domain of consulting professions in Germany!

"Saying" does not exempt from the written form! I wonder anyway how you come to the conclusion that the original general contractor should bill according to the costs you find acceptable?

Back to the topic. There is a ruling by the Higher Regional Court of Frankfurt am Main, judgment of 13.03.2012 - 5 U 116/10. This ruling states that general contractors are precisely not allowed to bill according to the HOAI when providing construction services. They can, of course, still align their invoices to the HOAI scale.

In your case, however, no construction activities actually took place; it remained at planning services. This means your former general contractor could bill according to the HOAI rates; at least it is disputed whether this could be prohibited. Therefore, the specific case must be examined by a specialist lawyer.

Now you have to weigh for yourself what costs will incur from hiring a specialist lawyer/whether your case possibly has to be decided in court and whether this is in a reasonable proportion to your former general contractor’s invoice for the design planning.

Rhenish regards

For the future, so that you don’t make this mistake again:

Especially when you know exactly that it won’t work with him, why don’t you clarify the question of costs in advance? You should do that with everything... otherwise, it could hold expensive surprises in store for you at one point or another in your further house construction.