I have a potential project where the client wants to add two bathrooms to their home and enclose a patio to turn it into a master closet. I've contacted and engineer who will do the structure and MEP. I was wondering if what I'm thinking of charging is reasonable. I estimate 80 hours of work for construction documents and calculated $80/hour, for a total of $6,400. Does this seem too low? Too high? I am located in Miami for reference, and I am doing this on my own so I don't really have any overhead.
SneakyPete
Sep 3, 21 7:17 pm
80 sounds criminally low to me.
b3tadine[sutures]
Sep 3, 21 7:41 pm
80 hours, or yeah?
cdimey
Sep 3, 21 7:54 pm
The hours or the cost per hour?
SneakyPete
Sep 3, 21 7:57 pm
$$
sameolddoctor
Sep 3, 21 10:03 pm
Maybe I am horribly out of touch, but will someone really pay more then $6,400 for this job?
proto
Sep 3, 21 10:24 pm
You have CD time. What about SD & DD & permitting & CA time? You also don’t express the level of design service you intend to provide.
In my neck of the woods, a full gut bathroom is $50k const cost [ie, no shell]. Your fee sounds good for just one bathroom in an existing gutted space.
The remaining scope just makes it higher, of course: new construction shell to house all the spaces
$130k of const cost?
OP, only you can value your time here, but it sounds way low to me
joseffischer
Sep 4, 21 2:59 pm
$50k for a bathroom??? we're still getting all the bells and whistles for $12k... your $50k numbers seems more like an economy kitchen to me
Wood Guy
Sep 4, 21 5:39 pm
For perspective, earlier this year I got a price from a builder to gut and redo a tiny full bathroom at my mom's apartment house. Pretty low-end, often Section 8 tenants; we try to keep it reasonably good but certainly not fancy. Not moving any fixtures. $12,500. That's twice what the apartment brings in annually so I did a half-assed reno instead for about $4500 in materials and subs and what would be about $2500 in labor if I charged her carpentry wages. The last semi-nice bathroom I did as a builder in 2017 was $35K. The last decent kitchen gut-reno I did in 2019 was $110K. (I didn't make any profit on either job, for what that's worth, and I gave up trying to build things for money.)
proto
Sep 5, 21 6:44 pm
We can’t do a full gut kitchen for less than $100k anymore. It was more like $75k before the pandemic. Our fees tho haven’t shifted in that time.
@joseffischer where are you? I’m in Portland, OR. We have a dearth of pros in the trades; materials are more expensive than ever; & the good GCs are busier than ever. All these add up to $$$.
Wood Guy
Sep 4, 21 10:28 am
By "80 hours for CDs" do you mean for the entire process up to CDs? That sounds reasonable to me but it would depend on how complex the project is.
As for fee, around here, northern New England, that kind of project could be anywhere from $80K to $200K; let's say in the $120K range. Full service residential fees should be at least 8% of construction costs, or a bare minimum of 5%, though that's very low, and once you have a name for yourself you could get 12-15% or more. So your fee could be anywhere from $4K to $20K, but $6-10K is a likely range.
Billing hourly, I'm unlicensed and do only residential design, mostly renovations. I've been at it for about 15 years with 10 years of construction experience before that. The last 7 years on my own. I just bumped my billing rate to $150/hr. $80/hr might be ok if this is one of your first solo projects but I would get the rate up as quickly as possible; just be sure you're providing service at a level that justifies the fee.
I have a potential project where the client wants to add two bathrooms to their home and enclose a patio to turn it into a master closet. I've contacted and engineer who will do the structure and MEP. I was wondering if what I'm thinking of charging is reasonable. I estimate 80 hours of work for construction documents and calculated $80/hour, for a total of $6,400. Does this seem too low? Too high? I am located in Miami for reference, and I am doing this on my own so I don't really have any overhead.
80 sounds criminally low to me.
80 hours, or yeah?
The hours or the cost per hour?
$$
Maybe I am horribly out of touch, but will someone really pay more then $6,400 for this job?
You have CD time. What about SD & DD & permitting & CA time? You also don’t express the level of design service you intend to provide.
In my neck of the woods, a full gut bathroom is $50k const cost [ie, no shell]. Your fee sounds good for just one bathroom in an existing gutted space.
The remaining scope just makes it higher, of course: new construction shell to house all the spaces
$130k of const cost?
OP, only you can value your time here, but it sounds way low to me
$50k for a bathroom??? we're still getting all the bells and whistles for $12k... your $50k numbers seems more like an economy kitchen to me
For perspective, earlier this year I got a price from a builder to gut and redo a tiny full bathroom at my mom's apartment house. Pretty low-end, often Section 8 tenants; we try to keep it reasonably good but certainly not fancy. Not moving any fixtures. $12,500. That's twice what the apartment brings in annually so I did a half-assed reno instead for about $4500 in materials and subs and what would be about $2500 in labor if I charged her carpentry wages. The last semi-nice bathroom I did as a builder in 2017 was $35K. The last decent kitchen gut-reno I did in 2019 was $110K. (I didn't make any profit on either job, for what that's worth, and I gave up trying to build things for money.)
We can’t do a full gut kitchen for less than $100k anymore. It was more like $75k before the pandemic. Our fees tho haven’t shifted in that time.
@joseffischer where are you? I’m in Portland, OR. We have a dearth of pros in the trades; materials are more expensive than ever; & the good GCs are busier than ever. All these add up to $$$.
By "80 hours for CDs" do you mean for the entire process up to CDs? That sounds reasonable to me but it would depend on how complex the project is.
As for fee, around here, northern New England, that kind of project could be anywhere from $80K to $200K; let's say in the $120K range. Full service residential fees should be at least 8% of construction costs, or a bare minimum of 5%, though that's very low, and once you have a name for yourself you could get 12-15% or more. So your fee could be anywhere from $4K to $20K, but $6-10K is a likely range.
Billing hourly, I'm unlicensed and do only residential design, mostly renovations. I've been at it for about 15 years with 10 years of construction experience before that. The last 7 years on my own. I just bumped my billing rate to $150/hr. $80/hr might be ok if this is one of your first solo projects but I would get the rate up as quickly as possible; just be sure you're providing service at a level that justifies the fee.
$1 billion dollars. No more, no less.