Custom Home Designs

One of the considerations for many prospective customer is whether to engage an architect for the design of their custom luxury home. I’m going to give you some solid reasons why I think you shouldn’t engage an architect.

The biggest complaint I have come across when potential clients have engaged an architect for a custom home design is that the build budget is not met. I had a lady quite recently who came to me with her architect drawn plans that another builder had costed up for her.  Her budget was a substantial sum – $1,400,000, not a bad budget when considering the home was just for one person. None the less, once she got the price back from her builder the price came in at $2,000,000. She was so upset with the process, she on sold the property, in my opinion the building industry had failed her. This is not an isolated incident, but certainly illustrates the importance of meeting build targets. “a plan you can’t afford is a useless piece of paper”.

So lets talk figures, the thing I like about numbers is they never lie. Architects fees can vary between different firms, the fees can range from 5% to 14%. I’m going to base it on a conservative 5% – I cant get any fairer than that… lets say you are building a $1,200,000 build and let’s also assume that the Architect is going to administer the contract at 3%. The custom home design concepts are going to therefore cost you $60,000 and administration another $36,000. Couldn’t you find a more constructive use of your $96,000? Plus if some additional detail is required through the build, this will be charged at an hourly rate. But it gets worse, in the example of the lady from Swanbourne, had she proceeded the fee structure would have been calculated on the 2 million dollar build.  To add insult to injury the architect now has another project funded by you for their portfolio.