Development Question; How much do architect drawings cost?

Keep in mind that when you hire an architect, you're typically hiring a single point of contact who provides both their own drawings/services and those of their consultants: structural engineers, civil, plumbing, electrical, HVAC, sprinkler, tele/data, code consultants, envelope consultants....etc. In the commercial and institutional construction world, probably more than 50% of the fee you pay the architect gets passed on to consultants, and that number is trending upward.

SFR is a different story than other building types because the MEP systems are rarely engineered. For a typical house you have just the architect, along with a limited amount of structural engineering in more heavily-regulated jurisdictions. The electricians, plumbers, and HVAC subs design their own systems without any engineered drawings.

In SFR there's also a huge potential range of service that architects can provide. On one end of the spectrum you have a $3000 set of plans and exterior elevations for a $350,000 house- less than 1% of hard costs. No engineering, no details, and no construction phase services. It’s enough to get a permit and give the builder a general layout, but that’s it. On the other end you have architects getting 18% on $20M homes in the Hamptons (seriously…I know them). For that they are literally detailing the custom doorknobs, and spending days at a time picking bathroom fixtures with the hedge fund manager client’s wife. And there is a big range between those extremes.

In the institutional world (K-12 education, higher ed, museums, government buildings, etc) total architect fees (including engineering) probably come in around 8%. Buildings with a lot of intense systems coordination, like labs and hospitals, are higher.

In multifamily the numbers are somewhat lower, and also a lot more variable based on the size of the project. It’s not that much less work to design a 100 unit building than a 200 unit building since there’s so much repetition. Maybe 7% on a small job, trending down to as low as 3% on a big one.

In a non-SFR job where the design team provides construction admin services, assume the overall fee is split maybe 20% for Schematic Design, 15% for Design Development, 45% for Construction Docs, and 20% for Construction Administration. Maybe Bidding gets split out as a separate phase of 5% or so. Can vary somewhat.

Renovation projects typically have higher fees than new construction. A high school might be 8%, but a high school renovation might be 12%

Think also about what additional services you might use, if any. Architects will exclude rendering work beyond basic stuff, and will typically bill hourly for permitting work. If you’re going through a long and difficult entitlements process you can run up a decent bill.