Does anyone know what it costs to got a home designed by an architect and what it normally costs to get one done?

I used a builder with an in house architect... design/build contract. Avoids a potential disconnect of ending up with a design that can't be built within your budget.

Thanks. My builder doesn't have an in house architect but recommended one to me. I was just curious.

Had a 3000 sqft custom home drawn up about 5 years ago. It was around **edit** $4500 iirc

$1.50+ sqft under roof then add $0.75-$1 for the engineering side.

If you want fully licensed architect from a top end designed studio, it can be substantially more.

We used a "custom home designer" at half the cost of a licensed architect. The architectural expertise is baked into the design software these days. It allows easy what-ifs and adjusts structural, electrical, plumbing and HVAC per local building code. We specified the overall layout and design objectives, leveraged the home designer's experience, and the software dispensed a construction-ready set of 2D and 3D plans. Also made it very easy to precisely model the position of the foundation on our lot. This was over ten years ago - I think we paid $3k for the design of a 4000 sf home and pool. It's probably tripled in price because of Let's Go Brandon's record inflation.

It costs a lot to involve a real architect. (Aka not a draftsman)

It's worth every penny, IMO.

But that also depends on home budget.

I'd guess that for most spending under $1 to $1.5 mil, I'm not sure they'd spend the 10-15% to go through the architectural process.

Yes that's 10-15% of the home budget.

I didn't like the fee being tied to a % of sqft because it gave no incentive to be brilliant with space usage. We ended up with just a sprawling oversized project. Unsatisfying.

ktownag08 said:

---

$1.50+ sqft under roof then add $0.75-$1 for the engineering side.

If you want fully licensed architect from a top end designed studio, it can be substantially more.

---

Please send me some recommendations at that price.

All I've seen is $10/ft+.

When we were interviewing builders last spring, one name keep coming up as an "amazing" designer, Ken Boyd of Design One of Dallas. While we interviewed several well known home designers around Texas, we decided to go with Ken. No regrets. He works fast and creates beautiful designs with your budget in mind. He really listened to us every step of the way and was quick to steer us away from things that would have been a mistake or add unnecessary costs.

While he is not an architect, i don't think one was needed for our situation. Once we had a set of plans from Ken, our builder gave a set to the engineer that designed our foundation and another set to another engineering firm that created framing plans. So, we have high confidence that we will get a solid house that looks great.

In 2021, Ken's cost was $1.35/sqft for everything under roof. He also charges additional fees if you want him to print the actual blueprints. Our builder preferred getting the pdfs from Ken and printing them himself (which saved us several hundred dollars). When we wanted to have our own set, we just printed them out at Kinkos.

MallalieuAg said:

---

Does anyone know what it costs to got a home designed by an architect and what it normally costs to get one done?

---

Ranges considerably. There are positives and negatives of using an architect vs a draftsman and builder.

Thanks everyone. The home I want to build is around 2400 sq ft and I was given an estimated cost of around $8500.

That price sounds pretty good. If it is a good recommendation, sounds like you will get what is needed.

My wife and I were budgeting about $800k for a house and out-building. Had the 5 acres already. My MIL wanted "her" architect to do the project. I am in the home renovation business and am pretty comfy with design and space planning. I also knew our 'style', so I established the floor plan on the interior as well as the exterior (window placement, porch, etc.) Just needed architect to do roof lines, loads, foundation... Had a separate engineer doing storm water mgmt and septic.

Architect threw my plans in the garbage and over the next 4 months I battled with him weekly as he designed a monument to himself. He insulted me on many occasions. I hated every minute of dealing with him, he billed me for bizarre topics of research. $15k later I fired him, then he sent another bill for $25k. I refused to pay, my MIL ended up paying him out of sympathy. (I have a weird MIL). He was going to be in the 10% range of the project, even though I was going to do a certain amount of work myself (cabinetry, moldings), he was going to bill the 10% on the retail value of my work.

I have a problem with the percentage. If someone wants luxurious items; expensive plumbing fixtures, upgraded windows/doors, great custom cabinetry, etc...that can add tens, perhaps over $100k to the job and the architect gets more money for doing the same amount of work? I don't agree.

Moral of the story; just make sure his/her previous work is in synch with what you want. I f***** up, I trusted my MIL.

1988PA-Aggie said:

---

That price sounds pretty good. If it is a good recommendation, sounds like you will get what is needed.

My wife and I were budgeting about $800k for a house and out-building. Had the 5 acres already. My MIL wanted "her" architect to do the project. I am in the home renovation business and am pretty comfy with design and space planning. I also knew our 'style', so I established the floor plan on the interior as well as the exterior (window placement, porch, etc.) Just needed architect to do roof lines, loads, foundation... Had a separate engineer doing storm water mgmt and septic.

Architect threw my plans in the garbage and over the next 4 months I battled with him weekly as he designed a monument to himself. He insulted me on many occasions. I hated every minute of dealing with him, he billed me for bizarre topics of research. $15k later I fired him, then he sent another bill for $25k. I refused to pay, my MIL ended up paying him out of sympathy. (I have a weird MIL). He was going to be in the 10% range of the project, even though I was going to do a certain amount of work myself (cabinetry, moldings), he was going to bill the 10% on the retail value of my work.

I have a problem with the percentage. If someone wants luxurious items; expensive plumbing fixtures, upgraded windows/doors, great custom cabinetry, etc...that can add tens, perhaps over $100k to the job and the architect gets more money for doing the same amount of work? I don't agree.

Moral of the story; just make sure his/her previous work is in synch with what you want. I f***** up, I trusted my MIL.

---

Your post nailed the biggest negatives we've seen with licensed architects. A lot of them either don't listen at all or they do listen but they also pick out finishings that are unrealistic, out of budget and won't listen to reason. Then, you add in the fact that they take a percentage of the whole job even if they only do a certain portion.

We started with an architect. TBD on results yet. I was slightly annoyed that he went through one initial draft, and missed that a heritage tree's full critical zone coverage was mostly taken up by a neighbors driveway. I have a survey, and he visited our home once, but didn't put 2+2 together.


Now I'm stuck waiting for a predevelopment consultation with the city of Austin. Fml.

The costs are $10/ft. That's better than I saw with 3-4 other architects.

I paid 8k including structural (6 for drawing and 2 for engineering) for a 700 sq foot addition in Austin. Then almost 10k in permits

I was quoted 7.50/ft in Dallas, not including any structural or foundation engineering, but including several detailed drawings for most of the finish features.

Honestly I thought it was a bit high for the very straight-forward design we wanted (very traditional Georgian architecture), so we haven't kicked off that process yet as we shop around a bit more.

We used a really good architect in Houston and he was about 4 - 5% of build cost - although he just billed by the hour and not as a percentage. He also helped us find a builder who he had worked with before in our budget.

This is eye opening for me. We had plans including engineering for a 5500 sq foot home drawn up by a good architect for 10K (1.5% of build costs). This was 10 years ago and I thought this was steep. It took her 2 wks to complete the drawings to our specifications, and changed things around after about 5 revisions.

So she made 10K for 2 wks work and I am sure she was doing other projects at the same time.

If you extrapolate the cost of building our 5500 sq foot home today (we owned the land) would be a minimum of 1.6M. @5-10% build cost is 80-160K for 2 wks of work? This can't be for real.

nm - saw you edit - figured that had to be a typo.

Our architect took WAY more than 2 weeks to complete the plans. And of course he was working on other projects at the same time - but he also had other people working on our project as well. Ours were very detailed, custom plans - with a fair amount of meetings and revisions. You can spend a lot less$/ft and also a lot more than we did.

Medaggie said:

---

This is eye opening for me. We had plans including engineering for a 5500 sq foot home drawn up by a good architect for 10K (1.5% of build costs). This was 10 years ago and I thought this was steep. It took her 2 wks to complete the drawings to our specifications, and changed things around after about 5 revisions.

So she made 10K for 2 wks work and I am sure she was doing other projects at the same time.

If you extrapolate the cost of building our 5500 sq foot home today (we owned the land) would be a minimum of 1.6M. @5-10% build cost is 80-160K for 2 wks of work? This can't be for real.

---

They go by hours. 80 hrs is pretty good if it includes building construction documents.

A $1.6M 5500 home likely isn't costing over $60-75k in architect fees.

Our home architectural plans were completely custom. 10K even felt expensive for having it completed in two weeks. I had no idea it could take 80 hrs and assumed it was like a 10-20 hr project.

I think a flat rate per sq feet makes more sense rather than 10% of build out. Why would plans for a 3K sqft high end home costing 1.5M to build be more expensive than a 3K sq foot home with basic finishes costing 600K? Its not like they have anything to do with selection/finish out.

I will say the custom home builder liked our plan and we signed a waiver stating they could use our plans for further homes. Maybe they foot some of the costs over the 10K we paid.

But the plans were essentially done in 2 wks and we made very minor changes. 10K for 2 wks = 80 hrs comes out to 125/hr seemed high 10 yrs ago. If some are paying 10% of construction cost, they would be making 160K or 2K/hr. I would never tell anyone how much they are worth but in no way would I ever pay an architect 2k/hr.

Well, I can only tell you the work allotment for many isn't 80 hrs. Maybe they are lying, but ours is 60 up to prelim plans. 120 hrs for construction/builder documents. I think all total they had 240 hrs across 4 phases.

WOW
All these stories & opinons - esp. Meaggie?!?!? - that's not part of my world since the 80s.

Gotta say the only reason some of these nightmares occurred must have been via referrals from either the under educated OR someone profiting from the mis-guidance.

I do understand some poor stories coming at the hands of commercial architects that give lesser priorities to residential clients and thus use these bones for their newbies & even draftsmen to cut their teeth on. That never works out with happy faces.

There's just too much reading here to even attempt to correct all the misinformation, at least in my real world experiences a residential-specialist licensed architect. Aggie trained to "put the design cookies on the bottom shelf", to design as a chameleon for the tastes of others, be an Eagle Scout and always what's best for the Owner.

WOW what a read this was. So sorry to learn so many fall in the mud just trying to create a house that takes care of them and their lifestyle.

WHEW!!!

Best place to complain and get these bums out of the biz
https://www.tbae.texas.gov/LawsAndEnforcement/Complaints

I wish MallalieuAg had contacted me.

We are in process of building. Used a reputable architect and dropped around $21k on 4000sqft or so of home. We had a lot of drafts though before settling on one.

What town if you don't mind me asking?

College Station