Submit a building inquiry in Hamburg

An update: A phone call with a licensed engineer has revealed that Hamburg recently changed its regulations regarding the submission of preliminary inquiries. Only licensed persons are now allowed to submit inquiries. It seems that this is indeed correct.

A phone call with an engineer authorized to submit building documents revealed that Hamburg recently changed its regulations for submitting preliminary inquiries. Only persons authorized to submit building documents are now allowed to make inquiries. So it seems to be true.

Free after Asterix: "the Hamburgers are crazy!". Even if your property were located in the free port, regulations of the Hamburg Senate must comply with the laws of the Federal Republic of Germany. By the way, there is no obligation to have a lawyer before the administrative court.
"To avoid a constitutional complaint, I expect you to process my preliminary building inquiry without giving me cause for a reminder". In a free and Hanseatic city, I assume that the building officer is a fully qualified lawyer and knows when he is on lost ground.

However, you can also (which I objectively recommend as the royal road) make the preliminary draft the basis (and attachment) of the preliminary building inquiry. Service phases 1 and 2 according to HOAI together make up nine percent of the architect's fee.

Thank you for your answers. Some terms are still not quite clear to me and I am still very upset that we have to involve an architect at such an early stage. We don't even know yet whether we will buy the plot of land. In order to find out whether the plot with an existing building is suitable for us, a preliminary building inquiry is to be submitted first. If for any reason we are not allowed to extend, the plot is not an option for us at all. I would therefore like to keep the costs as low as possible in advance and preferably obtain flat-rate offers from architects for submitting the preliminary inquiry. The HOAI was abolished in 2021, now a freer contract arrangement with flat-rate offers is possible. The lady from the building authority said that "a rough plan is necessary. It is not necessary to have all the windows exactly drawn in at this point, you have to be able to roughly see what you intend." Aha. Is a "preliminary design" from the architect more detailed than a "rough plan"? My plan now was to ask the architect for a flat-rate offer for creating a preliminary building inquiry with a rough plan. Is this a good approach? What else should I pay attention to when obtaining the offers?

Thank you for your answers. Some terms are still not quite clear to me

Please, don’t let that be the issue: A preliminary building inquiry (Bauvoranfrage) is the legal instrument you need here. This inquiry is ideally submitted to a building authority not just textually, but with visual attachments in the form of drawings showing how the planned construction project will fit into the property. Anyone can and may do this, and a simple student’s set square is already the only technical tool required. If you have an architect do this for you and already have a preliminary draft from them, use that preliminary draft for the visual attachments of the inquiry. A preliminary draft is a sketch of the building at a scale of 1:200, from which only the building shape including compliance with all maximum dimensions and roof pitch can be recognized, and it is still far from determining window locations. This preliminary planning belongs to service phase 2 according to HOAI (which, by the way, remains valid and is even being updated; only the binding application of its fee schedule has been abolished). There is no rough planning—and certainly none that (see “windows”) goes beyond the preliminary planning. Therefore, in my opinion, you should dare to submit the preliminary building inquiry yourself to their royal majesty, the head of the building authority, which you are entitled to as a layperson under republican law. Due to the strange attitude of the building authority, I advise you to accompany this with the sentence mentioned in post #14. A reminder is nothing other than what is called a “first reminder” in everyday language. They should not even get the idea to cause you to act by delaying processing. The head of the building authority will then go to the head of the legal department, who will tell him: “Hinnerk, you’re out of luck, this citizen knows her rights.” A norm control lawsuit (Normenkontrollklage) is a lawsuit seeking a ruling that a regulation violates higher-ranking law (and is therefore null and void). The strange special path of the Hamburg building authority (or is it only that of the district office?) is exactly what attorney Jun so nicely calls “nonsense law” (“Quatschjura”). “No obligation to use an attorney” means that you could sue the building authority at the administrative court to process your preliminary building inquiry without having to send a lawyer. Hence the subtle warning: “Now, you better comply voluntarily with the laws before I make you move your legs or even pull your ears.” Experience shows that administrations understand such warnings when they have to mess around with other citizens—the ones who know their rights are a minority and do not seriously endanger the smooth operation of the public service. So, an “exception” *LOL* can happen. In my assessment, this way you will get ahead faster than trying to find an architect, civil engineer, bricklayer, or master carpenter ready to provide a planning variant that does not exist in HOAI’s catalogue of services.

P.S.: You can show here how the existing house is built (floor plans, section, cadastral extract / aerial photo) and discuss the possibilities of building an extension with the community. Maybe will make you a drawing as an exception even if it is not on a slope (?)