Is it possible to determine the eligible costs based on a rough estimate?

85k€ wants... sorry, I plan that myself. That is a gross annual salary in a large corporation, even in Stuttgart.

LOL... but that's a blanket statement. Hopefully for the cleaning lady

Or why don't you just do it alone? Just calculate with 1x% and that's it. It's not much less anyway and probably not much more either. If you don't have that much flexibility in your budget... you're at the wrong architect anyway.

I thought so too until now, but so far I have not received any acquisition service from 2 architects I contacted, except for a preliminary discussion to win me as a client. However, it was made clear that they would be happy to continue working with us, but this would already incur initial costs. For me as a client, a first conversation is too little acquisition effort in the competition.

Nonsense... as an entrepreneur, I don’t waste time forever either. Anyone who can do something... their time is valuable! With me, there is also a conversation and a brief analysis. After that, I want to see cash or the client is welcome to move on

On the one hand, it is not necessary, on the other hand, an architect is a freelancer and not a business. The man only has his working hours that he can sell. You really have to watch how much you do for free. Especially in the field where half the world wants to build but only a few really own a plot of land. You can't go to a freelancer just for window shopping, or he will end it quickly.

Can only say what we expected from the architect before commissioning. On-site meeting to inspect the demolition building, interior inspection of the Reno object, scale-accurate copies of plans handed over to him, request for a pencil sketch with ideas on these plans of how the extension could look. Along with a rough estimate of the expected costs for his concept. We do get that. You have to know before commissioning what you will do and what you will pay. Office a tried to sell us BMW even though we asked for Opel. Office b listened to us. Please, how else should it work? It is clear that you cannot expect a real plan without a fee. But what we expect is also provided by every general contractor. Every developer as well. Karsten

LOL...that's quite a generalization. Hopefully for the cleaning lady

Or why don't you just do it alone? Just calculate with 1x% and that's it. It won't be much less anyway and probably not much more either. If you don't have that much flexibility in your budget...you're in the wrong place with the architect anyway.

There will certainly also be a cleaning lady here who earns 85k€. But I don't think the average architect will earn six figures. Otherwise, I really chose the wrong profession.

I don't understand what's wrong with demanding the maximum performance from a service provider.

We have the plot.

I pretty much agree with Karsten. The first of the two architects promised me a rough cost estimate by the weekend, so that seems to work with at least one of them. Next week I will go to a third one.

So, with our planner we only had a first free initial consultation to see if the chemistry was right. During this, our wishes were already asked about quite specifically and it was also clarified what budget we have. Furthermore, he explained to us how working with him looks like, what he will do and what he won’t. And he showed us sample projects of his own, houses he designed, so that we could see if his style suits us. We showed him a floor plan (self-drawn) that we like and he roughly discussed it with us and told us what he liked about it, what he might change, what would not work at all, etc... and he also gave some general tips about house building in general. Furthermore, he roughly calculated whether our desired house and our budget match. The free initial consultation lasted more than 3 hours. Afterwards, he sent us his fee offer by email and we had to decide whether to continue with him (paid) or not.

We found the initial consultation very insightful and informative, even if it only scratched the surface. But we didn’t expect more than that. We did not receive a proper written cost estimate. For safety, however, we set our budget somewhat lower in this meeting than it actually is, so that there is still enough buffer left and later, when a detailed cost estimate is available, we don’t have a big problem. No sketches or preliminary drafts were created either. We would never have expected that from our planner in the free initial consultation; it was also totally fine for us that it remained a free initial consultation and there were no more X free appointments. Also considering that we pay well below HOAI! Naturally, more is not included.

To reduce our risk in case it doesn’t work out with him, we commissioned him in phases, so we only initially gave the commitment for planning up to the building permit, thus minimizing the financial risk. But we both immediately had a good feeling and have not regretted it so far. On the contrary, he has exceeded our expectations.