Architect fees

[Sprocker10]

I’m looking to remodel a house and have been quoted £1500 for a measured building survey, £2400 to go through the concept design (RIBA stage 2) and £2400 to go through the developed design (RIBA stage 3). To pay over £6000 to see if the project is viable is making me nervous and I wonder whether the planning costs will end up spiralling given this is just an initial design. I know architect prices will vary but is this typical? The budget altogether is between £40k-£50k for the remodel itself. Later we will add some extra for external improvements. The architect works in a small practice in the north. 
Thanks for any advice.

[Conor]

That's almost 15% of your total budget. Design fees should be closer to 5% of construction budget, going up to 10% to include engineer calcs, planning, BC fees etc. 

 

Can you tell us a bit more about the brief? Size of property, extent of remodelling and extensions?

 

Either your architect is very expensive or you're massively underestimating the budget required to do the works. But £1500 to measure a house is redoculous. £300-£500.

(Unless that includes things like asbestos survey and report, full engineers condition report etc)

 

Either way, shop round and get a couple more prices. Should do this regardless to see what other ideas they come up with.

Edited December 11, 2020 by Conor

[Ferdinand]

If this isn't Wentworth Woodhouse or very special, get a couple of quotes.

 

For a full service throughout a newbuild, the rates would be approx 6-12% plus disbursements (eg Council Fees) to be in line with RIBA guidelines.

 

Do you actually need anyone else to get a feel for the viability? Your costs will vary anyway, so an exact survey may be overdone - unless perhaps a firm price contract etc.

 

You could offer eg time and materials terms.

 

 

[ToughButterCup]

2 hours ago, Sprocker10 said:

...

I know architect prices will vary but is this typical? 

...

 

This is our architect's site: the clarity about pricing was one reason we decided to use them ....

[Sprocker10]

Haha, it definitely isn't Wentworth Woodhouse!  It's an ugly 1970s house but the ground floor space is nearly 140 square metres, including a large garage and then 4 reception rooms.  There's no extensions planned, it already has a full wrap around extension of all four walls.  I'd like to have two walls knocked down (one of these is part of the original outside wall and the other wall has the chimney breast) to create a large (approx 10m x 6m) kitchen/living space and have one sitting room.  I mentioned to the architect later turning the garage space into a self contained annexe, but that would be budgeted for separately. 

 

I can see the architect is willing to put in lots of time planning this, and seems excited about the project, but I'm just not sure that it's needed.  I have clear ideas on what I'd like to do.  I'm also worried we'd end up with a great design from him, but it won't be feasible financially and we'll have paid a lot of money for some pretty drawings!  

[PeterW]

So if this is all internal and you just need the drawings for structural purposes such as steel calculations then go to a structural engineer. It sounds like you know what you want to do, not quite sure what an architect would add at this point and you’ll still need the SEng calcs for building regs anyway. 

[the_r_sole]

A small project with a small budget doesn't necessarily mean the amount of work required is equally as small, sometimes trying to rework details to meet a small budget mean much more input than would be required on a bigger project or one with a bigger budget.

I've done a bit of research into how fees have worked on domestic alterations and extensions for the last couple of years and I'd say that 15% is about the average for consultant input (that's generally us and a structural engineer)

But when you consider that you're having to hand another 20% of your budget over to hmrc for vat and then you've got local authority fees, scaffolding, site set up etc, you can easily get to having less than half of your budget spent on the actual building work!

[Sprocker10]

Yeh, sorry, I didn't mean the time isn't needed to remodel the house, it has loads of potential and so I can see the work that might be required, particularly on a small budget.  I just meant it might not be needed for me...  I plan for the downstairs layout to basically stay the same, just without the walls! 

[Russell griffiths]

If you have a good idea of what you want then you just need an architectural technician to turn your ideas into drawings you can submit for building control, your budget is small, don’t spend what you don’t need to. 

[lineweight]

From an architect's point of view, the amount of work involved in a £50k project is not - say - 33% of the amount of work involved in a £150k project. It might actually be 60% or 80%.

 

Also, there are 50k projects that need a lot of design input (you want to take time looking at a few different options, or what you want to achieve requires some careful and thoughtful planning) and there are 50k projects that don't need a lot of design input (you pretty much know what you want, and it's standard stuff).

 

This is one reason why adopting a % approach to small projects really doesn't make sense.

 

If you approach an architect for a small project like this, you need to explain as best as you can what you are actually after, and they then have to try and make a judgement of how much work that will involve for them.

 

It might well be that all you need is a structural engineer or a technician. Just don't expect them to give you any design input beyond purely technical considerations.

[john0wingnut]

As some further input,

 

I am in the process of choosing an architect for my first floor extension.

Pricing has varied massively from £3600 to £10k, which is just madness.

One of the main areas where there is the most variability is this “feasibility” stage where you get given several proposals from them.

I too know what I want, but figured others point of views may end up coming up with something better.

Either way, the cost for this stage ranged from £1k to £4.6k. 
£1k to me is fine but £4.6k for the same thing is a tad OTT, considering one practices quote of that amount was for pretty much everything, including technical drawings.

I’ve budgeted £80k ish so £4K is about right.

[lineweight]

2 hours ago, john0wingnut said:

As some further input,

 

I am in the process of choosing an architect for my first floor extension.

Pricing has varied massively from £3600 to £10k, which is just madness.

One of the main areas where there is the most variability is this “feasibility” stage where you get given several proposals from them.

I too know what I want, but figured others point of views may end up coming up with something better.

Either way, the cost for this stage ranged from £1k to £4.6k. 
£1k to me is fine but £4.6k for the same thing is a tad OTT, considering one practices quote of that amount was for pretty much everything, including technical drawings.

I’ve budgeted £80k ish so £4K is about right.

 

From an architect's point of view that initial 'feasibility' or 'outline design' stage can be the most difficult to price because the amount of work involved can be very variable.

 

It might be that you pretty much know what you want, and it's just a matter of drawing up some basic plans to check it all works in principle, and it does, and the job is pretty much done.

 

On the other hand, you might think you know what you want, but would also like to have some other options suggested to you. Or, what you think you want turns out not to work. And you might be very decisive or you might be quite indecisive and the process ends up going through quite a lot of options and sub-options, or you change your mind about something once one design has already been pursued in a fair bit of detail.

 

Then there might be unexpected complications that make the project more difficult than it appears at the outset, or various unknowns that arise. Some of these kinds of things mean that it turns out you can't actually complete the 'feasibility' stage without doing some things that might normally come at a later stage. For example, perhaps you need to get a structural engineer involved to know whether something's going to work. Or, you might decide it makes sense to make a planning application or initial enquiry, before going down too far down the line with something that turns out to be a no-no from a planning point of view.

 

And then there's quite a variation in what can be presented as far as drawings are concerned. Some basic floorplan layouts, or detailed 3d visualisations? There's a judgement about what's necessary to help someone make a well informed decision, and what's overkill.

 

I guess my advice would be to pay most attention to the quotes which are accompanied with a bit of detail about what they actually propose to do for that "feasibility" stage. Where they simply state "feasibility" and then a price, then you don't really know what they are assuming or what you're getting. And it will give you a clue about whether their expectations broadly match with yours. Have they given an estimate, say, of how many face-to-face meetings they expect to have with you?

 

If an architect has come to see you, and look at the property, or at least had a bit of a chat with you on the phone, then that's probably a good sign that they've put some thought into what's actually likely to be involved - including getting an idea of what sort of client you might be, and what you actually want.

[NandM]

One of the quotes I've had is 1.5-2.4% of the total build...although I've asked for details on that range, the top end for my £250K build would be £6K up to Stage 3. (This architect is the only one to have responded so far, out of around 30 that I've emailed.)

[Adsibob]

If you are 100% sure of what you want to do, I agree an architect might not be necessary and that an engineer is going to give you more value for money, but I wouldn't skimp on the measured survey. Having really accurate drawings done with precision measuring equipment such as those made by Leica pay for themselves in the end, because otherwise small inaccuracies can lead to multiple revisions of subsequent plans.

 

Having said that, we thought we knew what we wanted, but we consulted a pretty famous architect for an initial ideas package and found his input invaluable. He got us to think exactly about how we used our home, what we liked about it and what we didn't, all the annoyances, warts and all, and he found a solution for everything and came up with an idea we hadn't thought of which involved moving our staircase from the corner of the house to the centre and putting in a big rooflight above it to bring lots of light into the house. It's a bit crazy to spend so much on a new staircase because there was nothing too wrong with our original one, but it did waste a lot of space and this new layout is going to completely revolutionise the space. We couldn't afford to do the whole project with this superstar architect, so after paying him £1k plus VAT for his ideas package, we then commissioned a much younger architect to implement these ideas into an actual workable scheme. He made a few mistakes along the way, but we got there in the end and saved a lot of money.

[goatcarrot]

@Adsibob who was your ‘famous architect?’