Architect Fees
Hi, I know this has been asked before, but the posts are a bit old, so thought I would ask again. We are doing a complete and utter (fairly high-end) gut renovation on a 2300 sq ft brownstone. We are going to retain an architect for all of the standard services (plans, general design assistance,…
Hi, I know this has been asked before, but the posts are a bit old, so thought I would ask again. We are doing a complete and utter (fairly high-end) gut renovation on a 2300 sq ft brownstone. We are going to retain an architect for all of the standard services (plans, general design assistance, permitting, overseeing the bidding and meeting with contractor weekly, etc). We found an architect that we really like, but her fee is 18% of the total construction costs. Is this reasonable for a job of this size?
I am an Architect living in Park Slope – new to this forum. I have recently started my own practice after many years of working on mid-to-high end residential in NYC and Brooklyn, and we’ve taken to only using the percentage fee as a guide to establish a fixed fee with the client while establishing the contract. We agree with jb312 that percentage fee does, even if only subconsciously, provide impetus from the architect for the project to cost more rather than putting oweness on the architect to work efficiently with and productively with the money the client has for the total project (construction plus fees). We do find that the percentage fee helps for budgeting at the very beginning (meet and greet) for both parties, as many clients know how much money they have in total, but not how it gets divided between construction and design/admin/consulting fees. We usually end up with fixed fees equivalent to the 16-18% range for residential (sometimes a bit lower) and 8-10% for commercial.
While I certainly agree with arch_tect that construction can start to escalate and the percentage fee protects against this, as long as the scope is WELL OUTLINED in the construction documents and contract, additional services should cover any scope creep. We’ve found that most clients can understand that they’ve added scope and must pay design fees on that.
Methods for compensation can be different and they are set by the Owner-Architect agreement. Percentage calculation based on the construction cost can be used to give you a general idea of the total fee but you should still expect to receive an hourly based invoice at every scheduled payment.
If you like your architect you should hire her, other else, I would love to meet with you and give you my proposal on the project.
Kind Regards.
there is no set % of the total construction cost. it is base on the type of services your are requesting from the architect. Architect usually do not do permitting unless you want to include the expediting serivce. Always hire an architect with dob expediting experience. if he does he will charge you less on that part of the service
Ditto Flashlightworthy
FlashlightWorthy,
We often encourage our clients to exclude those kind of material costs from the contractor’s bid to give the owner flexibility in choosing their materials (such as tile or light fixtures, etc.) which in turn eliminates any profit we could potentially make from such selections.
The type of scope changes/additions I was referring to were things like adding an HVAC system or renovating parts of the building they previously didn’t think they were going to renovate. These require much more thought, documentation and observation. Changing the tile specification on a finish schedule takes very little effort.
Thanks all, for the very informative responses…
Oy, and in that first post, I meant GUT renovation, not “guy” renovation. Though I suppose some of what I did was a bit on the masculine side. 😉
Oh, and one more detail… Charging hourly They ended up making something well *under* 10% of construction costs and yet they were well compensated for their work.
I did a 110% guy renovation of a 3,000 square foot carriage house and went with Baxt/Ingui for our architects. They charge by the hour and I’m very very pleased that they do. The percentage of construction just made no sense to me. Why should the architect make more because I decide to buy expensive subway tile? Or make less if I cheap out and buy rock-bottom tile?