Was in the office one of these eventful mornings and my manager happens to drop a "we're not doing residential because residential doesn't make money". I then thought to myself how I've spent 7 years in residential and how I could've been making bigger bank doing a different typology.
In terms of pure earning potential, is there any truth to this? Obv. revenue is based off of total cost and I'm sure large schools or hospitals are more profitable due to their shear scope but I haven't been around the block enough times to know which typologies fare better than others. I'm not in residential anymore but statements like that just makes me want to avoid residential for the rest of my career.
archi_dude
Mar 7, 19 6:02 pm
In my experience, yup. Those are the firms you here the nightmare “im licensed with 10 years experience, work for a micro manager boss and make 50k/yr with really scant benefits.” You also can’t really then go apply to a firm that does office/healthcare/industrial ect. becuase your experience is not really transferable to those types. So once you start there, really hard to get out, really narrows your earning and really narrows options of places to work or careers to switch to. Oh yeah, that’s also where you get your trunk slammer contractors who don’t read plans but we’re a great low bid and the owner expects you to do free CA to supplement it.
Rusty!
Mar 7, 19 6:39 pm
It depends on a lot of factors. If you have your own clients (and not working for others) and are doing work for rich clients, there is loads of money to be made. If you are working for developers who do multi unit housing, it will help that you only do this project type and you do a lot of projects that are similar and can be pumped out fast. Design fee for them is literally a line in an excel document, and it's razor thin. You make up for it in volume.
Large offices that do primarily commercial architecture and will dabble in residential will always lose money on those projects. You still do them to feed the insufferable architecture ego.
But what arci_dude said is spot on.
shellarchitect
Mar 8, 19 12:57 pm
don't think you really missed out on much, but I wouldn't go back either. bigger firms have much higher pay as you move up the ladder because a single person can direct the work of a whole team and add a lot of value. when the "project" is small there isn't much room to add a lot of value.
The EntreaArchitect facebook group seems to be mostly sfr architects and designers. The stories they tell of cheap as clients are crazy. Also crazy are the dumb questions they ask when they somehow convince someone to give them a commercial job and realize that they have no idea what they're doing.
Non Sequitur
Mar 8, 19 1:58 pm
I am a member of that FB just for the stories.
tduds
Mar 8, 19 2:02 pm
Oh boy another time-sink!
*joins*
G4tor
Mar 8, 19 3:03 pm
Perhaps this explains
why the profit margins are on the downward decline...
wurdan freo
Mar 8, 19 2:04 pm
In my experience the only real money in residential is though spec development. Arch or GC side can make a living but total fees represent about 20-30% cost of construction where as the developer can net 50% the cost of construction... or lose it all.
Also... Liability and PITA factor with residential clients is hard to put a number on.
Bench
Mar 8, 19 4:11 pm
A friend of mine does hand-off for residential projects, he's a licensed Tech and gets through over 1 project per week for CD development. Hes a revit guru, and is doing a decent turnover on revenue; however it seems clear that there's not much room to increase productivity, only to increase volume. Meanwhile myself and one other coworker just handed in a multi-million dollar CD submission (institutional) over a 12-week timeframe. Friday beers gonna be good this week.
G4tor
Mar 8, 19 4:50 pm
Seems like the only way to really make it is to run a Revit (efficient) sweat shop (volume) of unpaid interns (low overhead).
archiwutm8
Mar 8, 19 9:08 pm
Fucking hate residential, most boring shit I've ever done.
tduds
Mar 11, 19 7:46 pm
It's definitely got the biggest delta. The best and worst projects I've worked on were both houses.
TIQM
Mar 12, 19 2:43 pm
I've worked in commercial, institutional, retail, and residential. By far, the most interesting work for me has been high-end custom residential. Which is why that's all I do now.
BulgarBlogger
Mar 8, 19 9:39 pm
I have been doing luxury residential in NYC with median budgets of 15 million dollars; the ultra expensive ones have been in the 30-40 million range. Not sure what your manager is talking about... you can easily make a million dollar fee....
Sean!
Mar 11, 19 6:27 pm
From what I hear to make real dough you have to be doing the high-end stuff and be at the top of the food chain.
When I was in college I worked for a shop that did a lot of work in the Hamptons. There were 2 partners and 1 staff architect and a bunch of interns. I got the feeling that the partners were doing pretty good but the staff architect complained constantly... lack of benefits, pay, etc... He was one of those, 'get out while you still can' guys. What makes a lot of commercial firms successful is the ability to diversify your work by taking on different practice areas. I suspect it's tough to do that in the residential world and can leave you in a bit of a precarious financial situation when the market takes a hit.
Was in the office one of these eventful mornings and my manager happens to drop a "we're not doing residential because residential doesn't make money". I then thought to myself how I've spent 7 years in residential and how I could've been making bigger bank doing a different typology.
In terms of pure earning potential, is there any truth to this? Obv. revenue is based off of total cost and I'm sure large schools or hospitals are more profitable due to their shear scope but I haven't been around the block enough times to know which typologies fare better than others. I'm not in residential anymore but statements like that just makes me want to avoid residential for the rest of my career.
In my experience, yup. Those are the firms you here the nightmare “im licensed with 10 years experience, work for a micro manager boss and make 50k/yr with really scant benefits.” You also can’t really then go apply to a firm that does office/healthcare/industrial ect. becuase your experience is not really transferable to those types. So once you start there, really hard to get out, really narrows your earning and really narrows options of places to work or careers to switch to. Oh yeah, that’s also where you get your trunk slammer contractors who don’t read plans but we’re a great low bid and the owner expects you to do free CA to supplement it.
It depends on a lot of factors. If you have your own clients (and not working for others) and are doing work for rich clients, there is loads of money to be made. If you are working for developers who do multi unit housing, it will help that you only do this project type and you do a lot of projects that are similar and can be pumped out fast. Design fee for them is literally a line in an excel document, and it's razor thin. You make up for it in volume.
Large offices that do primarily commercial architecture and will dabble in residential will always lose money on those projects. You still do them to feed the insufferable architecture ego.
But what arci_dude said is spot on.
don't think you really missed out on much, but I wouldn't go back either. bigger firms have much higher pay as you move up the ladder because a single person can direct the work of a whole team and add a lot of value. when the "project" is small there isn't much room to add a lot of value.
The EntreaArchitect facebook group seems to be mostly sfr architects and designers. The stories they tell of cheap as clients are crazy. Also crazy are the dumb questions they ask when they somehow convince someone to give them a commercial job and realize that they have no idea what they're doing.
I am a member of that FB just for the stories.
Oh boy another time-sink! *joins*
Perhaps this explains why the profit margins are on the downward decline...
In my experience the only real money in residential is though spec development. Arch or GC side can make a living but total fees represent about 20-30% cost of construction where as the developer can net 50% the cost of construction... or lose it all.
Also... Liability and PITA factor with residential clients is hard to put a number on.
A friend of mine does hand-off for residential projects, he's a licensed Tech and gets through over 1 project per week for CD development. Hes a revit guru, and is doing a decent turnover on revenue; however it seems clear that there's not much room to increase productivity, only to increase volume. Meanwhile myself and one other coworker just handed in a multi-million dollar CD submission (institutional) over a 12-week timeframe. Friday beers gonna be good this week.
Seems like the only way to really make it is to run a Revit (efficient) sweat shop (volume) of unpaid interns (low overhead).
Fucking hate residential, most boring shit I've ever done.
It's definitely got the biggest delta. The best and worst projects I've worked on were both houses.
I've worked in commercial, institutional, retail, and residential. By far, the most interesting work for me has been high-end custom residential. Which is why that's all I do now.
I have been doing luxury residential in NYC with median budgets of 15 million dollars; the ultra expensive ones have been in the 30-40 million range. Not sure what your manager is talking about... you can easily make a million dollar fee....
From what I hear to make real dough you have to be doing the high-end stuff and be at the top of the food chain.
When I was in college I worked for a shop that did a lot of work in the Hamptons. There were 2 partners and 1 staff architect and a bunch of interns. I got the feeling that the partners were doing pretty good but the staff architect complained constantly... lack of benefits, pay, etc... He was one of those, 'get out while you still can' guys. What makes a lot of commercial firms successful is the ability to diversify your work by taking on different practice areas. I suspect it's tough to do that in the residential world and can leave you in a bit of a precarious financial situation when the market takes a hit.
Architecture is a tough business.