Architects??

[tgello]

Re: Architects/Construction Costs

ejb, we used a architect to do our house plans and got burned bad. the house is a 2100 sq.ft. farm house . 2 bed rooms open floor plan. we used a local guy with a good rep ( so we thought0. we put 4000. in the budget for plans. we just wanted the house drawn for framing purposes. started out fine ,then the price was gonna be a little more ,like 6200. upon final set of prints we got handed a bill for 12,000. we had payed him 6200. up to then. we told him we would not pay any more. did the lawyer stuff and didn't pay him any more. when i started doing the building i noticed the grade heights were off along with door sizes, garage door widths. stair well widths were not to code and so on....a real mess. watch everything close ....tgello

 

[DVerbarg]

Re: Architects/Construction Costs

Depending on your level of skill, command of the trade vernacular and "stage presence" when talking to subs you should be able to save quite a bit. Subs can take advantage of you if they don't think you know what you are doing. The price can be higher (to compensate for the extra time they have to spend with you) and they might do shoddy work. These factors can sometimes add up and negate the savings you might expect to get.

In a good economy (which the building trade appears to still be in) the "better" subs tend to stick to working with the GCs - leaving the "second tier" guys to do your work.

When we built our house we paid our GC $30k. We probably saved around $20k-$30k in costs because of who he knew and the pricing they gave him. Did some competitive pricing on my own during the process and his guys were always cheaper for the same quality of work. Not only did the money get saved but he also dealt with some of the headaches around schedules and such.

If we built again we would probably GC it ourselves knowing the contacts we have now and having the skills that we now have.

During the process of building we did some of the work ourselves, electrical and painting, saving around $30k.