Negotiating with tradespeople - Price advantage like in the bazaar?

Difficult to answer, as the choice of words is somewhat negative. With us, regarding the architect, it was always about discount and cash discount. It was successful in 80% of cases, between 3 - 6%. The other cases where it didn’t apply were mostly because craftsmen instead offered flat rates. That was also okay. In a tender, I find it almost fair if the architect gives the craftsmen another chance to improve their offer after the bid and price comparison. Trying three times to get another 1% or to negotiate something afterwards I consider bargaining, which I don’t like.

A reasonable business has already factored in every discount it grants.

Of course, and no serious entrepreneur makes offers where they just casually go down by 10%. What kind of impression would that even give.

First of all: builders should be clear that it is not the task of a craftsman to provide his service cheaper in order to make up for the price of a special request elsewhere. Facing costs money, the tiler and window maker cannot make that up again.

I just wanted to ask you how you handled negotiating / pushing prices with the different trades / craftsmen. [...] I don’t want to make an unpleasant impression with local companies because in the single-family house construction sector it has a really bad reputation.

I recommend that you use the usual procedure in the (not only single-family house) construction industry, to make a call for tenders instead of "negotiating".

In a call for tenders I find it almost fair if the architect gives the craftsmen the chance to improve their offer one more time after submitting the offer and price comparison.

This possibility is tacitly assumed by many suppliers. Therefore, I always mention in my inquiries that on the one hand I ask for the price only once – but that works only if on the other hand you expect a fair instead of a "dumping" price.

A reasonable company has calculated every discount it grants anyway.

A reasonable bidder first looks at the customer. With a weekend cowboy he does exactly the same, including the discount at first; with a teacher he calculates that the teacher will only report small defects after dismantling the scaffolding and wants to mask his greed for discounts. And a fool who thinks he’s clever has to expect that the professional is one step ahead of him.

Except for discounts on almost all trades (which in total really does make a difference), we didn’t negotiate - that was done by our construction supervisor who has known the companies for a long time. And I’m not sure to what extent that was already factored in beforehand. However, the price mostly felt fair, so everything was okay. Apart from that, I hate negotiating because I’m not good at it; I even struggle with it at flea markets and usually just don’t go there.

I also find negotiating very exhausting; after all, in Germany one is somewhat removed from the "haggling mentality." It definitely helps to obtain various offers beforehand (which also contain identical services) and then possibly mention them during the conversation. Sometimes you can still get something, but ultimately it is you who accepts the offer - or not.