Goduco Design - Architects

I would think twice before hiring this architect. In my opinion, the owner is difficult to deal with, and not above retaliation if you upset him. Despite constantly telling us they've been doing this for 25 years, they seemed shady and were far too expensive. If you hire them, you can expect additional costs above your agreed-upon price because virtually nothing is included. Not printing, not stamping, not electrical, not mechanical. All these things are required to build a house. We hired Mr. Goduco to rebuild my mother's home. They were the original architect & were unwilling to release the original plans to any other architect so we had to hire them. The owner met with us several times and explained the process. Originally, he wanted $10k to complete the work that was nothing more than updates of an existing design. Eventually, our builder talked them down to $7500, but that's not what we paid. Goduco claimed it was extra for mechanical/electrical drawings that were apparently outsourced to another designer, but the funds were paid to Goduco Design (and the check cashed immediately). Goduco wanted us to consider them for the actual construction of the home. Their pricing was too high and the work would have been outsourced to other contractors anyway, so we went with another builder. This started a bit of a conflict with Goduco Design because our builder needed the printed, stamped plans to apply for permits. Mr Goduco refused to give them to us because he wanted to bring them to the village himself. In the beginning, he did tell us he would deliver plans to the village for us, but presented this as a courtesy not a requirement. The village wanted plans and permit application submitted together so nothing got lost. We couldn't do that because Goduco would not give them to us. After we refused to hire them to build the house, they began fighting me at every turn. They wanted to know who our builder is, which is really none of their business. They also had conflict with a builder we were considering because Mr Goduco took some things personally that the builder said about his pricing. And suddenly my emails weren't responded to quickly or at all. By the end of the process, I had to send second and third requests to get a reply. Hard to believe they have stayed in business this long. In my opinion, Mr G seems like the type who takes any criticism as a personal attack. He regularly engaged in passive aggressive attacks thru email. (When I asked him why he can't email plans, he answered, "I'm sorry you don't remember our conversation and didn't read our contract.") I had to handle him with kid gloves throughout the process. This review could have been written months ago, but I wanted to be sure we wouldn't need them for anything because I didn't want to risk retaliation. Crazy when you think that I'm the customer! For $12,000, all we got was an emailed, unstamped copy of the plans (18 pages!) and a lot of stress.

My husband and I hired Luis Goduco and his firm to draw plans for our home. We paid him a $5,000 fee to draw an average sized 4 bedroom home. All was going well until he became inconsistent with communicating to us and our builder. Almost 4 months after he was hired and began working, he tried to scam us out of an additional $8,000 to finish the project. When our builder told him that was absurd, he changed the number to another $5,000, or he would not finish the project. No concept changes made to plans at all. He ignored our builder’s email and I personally reached out to him twice to rectify the situation. No response from him or anyone else from his staff. Someone did respond to my Facebook messages and stated they’d pass it along to him, so he can’t use that as a cop out. I’ve started filing all necessary paperwork reporting this business to various companies, and truly hope he’s not able to do this to another family ever again. I also have all documentation and report numbers for claims submitted thus far if proof is desired. Please think twice about hiring this firm.