Well, our fees are similar. That is of course a lot of money, but when I think about the fact that my architect supervises a project for about 2 years and would only charge 20% of what the OP mentioned, I wouldn't believe that he really cares about it. If I were supposed to supervise a project for 2 years and get 10,000 - 20,000 €, I would also politely decline.
Well, around here you won’t find an architect who charges according to HOAI. Fees for architects here are usually in the range of about 12,000 to 15,000 € – and as I said, building with an architect is the usual way here; hardly anyone builds with a general contractor, as that is more expensive.
Our construction is finished. We have been living in the house for 1.5 years. Everything worked smoothly and without any problems, defects, or coordination effort on our part. In our opinion, our architect took very good care of things; he made all the tenders, compared offers, awarded contracts, coordinated the companies on the construction site, and checked the performed work and invoices. Yes, presumably, it was not as “detailed” as it would have been for a payment of 60,000 €. For example, in the design planning we had no fancy 3D model (which I painstakingly created myself in Sweet Home) and no exactly detailed execution plans at a scale of 1:50; our architect does not have a top-styled office with dozens of employees (he is a lone fighter without employees, with an office in his own little house). But our architect was on the construction site at least 2-3 times a week, checked on things, and coordinated the companies completely independently, without us having to lift a finger. Yes, that was done for the above-mentioned sum. But everything was handled quite “unbureaucratically,” more loosely and less formally than is surely usual, which of course also saves him time. But this is the norm here. We live in the countryside. Everyone somehow knows everyone within at most 10 degrees. Here only word of mouth counts and contracts are made by handshake. Our architect has so far supervised 5 construction sites on our small street with about 20 plots – I find that a lot. Of course not all at the same time, as he declines orders if he can no longer guarantee good supervision. He takes on a maximum of 3-4 construction projects simultaneously – exclusively single-family houses. He lives his job. With passion. You can tell. He does not need to earn riches. The supervision covered about 4 months of design planning including the building permit, and then about another 8-9 months for construction management, so about 1 year in total. He was no longer involved in the exterior work because we did that completely ourselves, but he is always there for us if we have questions. We were absolutely satisfied with his work; he fully met our expectations. For us, what he did was absolutely sufficient, although I don’t want to deny that supervision by a HOAI architect might have been even better. But for us, it was exactly right. He took a lot of work off our shoulders, and that was our goal – no more and no less. I would never have wanted to pay 60,000 euros for an architect; then I would have coordinated the trades myself. But the requirements differ, and if the house construction costs around 800,000 euros in total, then an architect for 60,000 euros is more feasible than for us, where our house construction, including land and all additional costs and landscaping, did not cost 350,000 euros total.
But I can only emphasize again and again: rural Rhineland-Palatinate. Things work differently here than elsewhere. It starts with prices for architects up to the house price and ends with the fact that we had almost no written contract with the executing companies or the architect. And still, everything worked smoothly.
I am fully aware that things don’t work like this in other regions of Germany – and that builders probably don’t want it that way – and I know that fees according to HOAI are common elsewhere and the idea that someone does similar work for 20% of that causes shaking heads. But here, that’s how it is. Here that’s normal. As I said, our construction is finished and I can say that our architect really did take good care of everything.