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joe_federer

Architect changed price mid-design; what are my options?

Joe Federer
8 years ago

We are trying to build a near-passive house (passivehaus) home. As many of you know, architects cost 10-15% of the build cost of a home... so for our 500k home, you know what kind of money we are talking about. Luckily we hired him based on a 'fixed price' contract whereby we get the construction documents for a fixed price.

We have been asking for changes to the plans for about 6 months. The architect has ignored these change requests (and other times simply said "we'll deal with that later") and continued to moved on to other 'phases' of his design process such that we are now in a 'phase' that doesn't allow anything but minor, insignificant changes. (this is after his first few designs were 400k over budget...)

At our last meeting, we brought up a (relatively simple) change that would solve a lot these lingering issues. Effectively a 80 square foot bump-out off the exterior kitchen door that would serve as a mud room rather than coming directly into the kitchen. He said that idea 'hurt his architectural pride' and said he wouldn't do it; leaning on the fact we were no longer in the 'design' phase. Saying that it would cost additional monies to have it designed. We disagreed vehemently on this point due to the fact we'd been asking about some of these issues since we WERE in the design phase.

We've already given him about 90% of his fees; we'd been paying monthly as work progressed.

Today I receive an obviously-lawyer-written letter from him indicating that the price for completion of the construction drawings as we want them is going to increase (significantly) and that he will now have sole input/veto power over anything he doesn't like... or that I can cancel my contract and not receive a refund (and then have no rights to the plans).

From his side, the contract is cut into phases (and priced that way too). He is offering to do move the money allocated for the last phase into the 'design' phase.


What recourse do I have?

I'm honestly floored that a supposedly reputable architect could possible tell me one price, then after I'm almost done paying for it all (and a year of living in my parents basement with newborn twins and a 2-year-old goes by while we whittle the design) change the price and say "pay the new price or walk away with nothing". The fact I could pay 40 grand and not end up with ANY plans (because I don't have rights to reproduce or modify the ones he's given me so far - even though my builder says the plans I have look 'done' [sans the mudroom] ).

The long term lesson here is avoid architects... but short-term, I need to know how to get a house out of this.

Help?

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