jan_christlieb
2024-04-01 22:57:18
- #1
Hello everyone,
I am opening this thread with the intention of exchanging experiences that future building families may benefit from.
What was your journey from the decision "We are building a house" to the signed construction contract? What approach did you choose? Did you work with an architect in advance for certain service phases and then approached potential providers with a design (service phase 3), a building permit (service phase 4), or even a concrete execution plan (service phase 5)? Did you perhaps even have your own architect for all service phases? Or did you go directly to your desired provider without (active/passive) offer comparisons? What experiences did you have along your way? Looking back, did you make a good or bad choice? What would you do differently with the knowledge you have today?
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Let me start. What did our path look like?
How do we look back on the process?
We are currently satisfied with our provider. The construction phase has not yet begun. The path to the provider was suboptimal:
That's it from me for now. If there are any questions, I am happy to go into more detail on individual points. Otherwise, I look forward to other reports of experience.
I am opening this thread with the intention of exchanging experiences that future building families may benefit from.
What was your journey from the decision "We are building a house" to the signed construction contract? What approach did you choose? Did you work with an architect in advance for certain service phases and then approached potential providers with a design (service phase 3), a building permit (service phase 4), or even a concrete execution plan (service phase 5)? Did you perhaps even have your own architect for all service phases? Or did you go directly to your desired provider without (active/passive) offer comparisons? What experiences did you have along your way? Looking back, did you make a good or bad choice? What would you do differently with the knowledge you have today?
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Let me start. What did our path look like?
[*]Requests to 4 architects for service phase 1-3
[*]Decision for a female architect with a fixed price offer
[*]The design planning was then the basis for offers from 5 house building companies
[*]ALL offers were between 10-25% above our max budget of 400K
[*]Comparability was not ideal with a passive provider comparison (without tendering) but still enlightening
[*]Discussions were intensified with 2 providers and practically replanned to stay within budget
[*]5 months after the first contact, we signed a contract
How do we look back on the process?
We are currently satisfied with our provider. The construction phase has not yet begun. The path to the provider was suboptimal:
[*]We definitely made an expensive mistake in choosing the architect. On the one hand, the design was financially not feasible for us and thus (almost) worthless, and on the other hand, the design also had some technical weaknesses as we realized during the further process
[*]Basically, I still find the idea of obtaining offers with a design promising. However, I would definitely try to write a clause into the architect contract so that most of the fee is only paid if, for example, at least 2 offers from a defined list of general contractors remain within the defined budget.
[*]Thought: Maybe the design doesn't even have to come from an architect, a construction supervisor(?) or a CAD freelancer certainly costs only a fraction of the architect's fee and might also be able to create a design tailored to our needs which can be used well as a basis for offers
That's it from me for now. If there are any questions, I am happy to go into more detail on individual points. Otherwise, I look forward to other reports of experience.