what does that actually mean
It means that we neither know any architects, nor do we know acquaintances here who could in turn know some. We are not from here ourselves... Since you keep hearing that even an architect can fail, we immediately decided against this consideration. We simply agreed that the prefabricated house manufacturers must know what they are doing given their numbers. Of course, over the past few months we have also uncovered one or two "windbags" and learned something, so we are actually quite sure that this should not be a total disaster now (knock on wood and amen!!). Regarding the question (which house builder will build our dream house well), we also had to take our plot of land into account. Unfortunately, it is not the easiest in terms of access, which is why some (most) were immediately out (two even declined because of that and gave us the cold shoulder), but that is another matter. As mentioned, we really feel very comfortable and now hope that we will not be proven otherwise. But yes, we are well aware of the risk of the distance.
how sensible is a "doubt" at this point?
I almost would have written: "too late". But it’s not as if we don’t know that. To make things more complicated, one of our 4 remaining options lives directly in the neighboring town and really knows everyone and their dog (he knows a company for every topic). Actually, our feeling about him isn’t that great (but not that bad either), even though he also "recreated" our dream house, but he is still in the running because he has known the people for decades. I even jokingly asked whether, if we didn’t choose his company, we could still hire him for such things (after all, he is also an independent sales agent), but unfortunately he declined with a grin...