Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Developers' and Architects' fees

[Fred H Olson WB0YQM (fholson]

JIM_SNYDER-GRANT/CAM/LOTUS.LOTUS [at] CRD.LOTUS.COM 
Jim_Snyder-Grant [at] crd.lotus.com
is the author of the message below but due
to a listserv problem it was posted by the COHOUSING-L sysop (Fred).

Fred's note:  
Jim's address seems to come in a variety of variations...

   I'm a bit behind with maintenance duties due to the 
attending the conference;  if you have written about a problem that 
doesn't get resolved in a week or so; write again then.

****************  FORWARDED MESSAGE FOLLOWS *********************

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rowena & Cambridge Coho:

Congratulations on maybe finding a site. Good luck with the next portion of the 
roller coaster ride - wherever it may go next. You asked for stories on 
architect's fees & developer fees....Here's New View's (Acton MA).

Architect stories:

Our architect is the firm of Amacher Quinn Associates. We are currently working 
them on the basis of a series of letters of understanding between them and our 
development manager, which outlines which services would be per hour & which 
would be fixed cost. It was intended to be an interim agreement until we got to 
a formal contract, but we have never gotten there. On the one hand, a more 
complete formal contract would have helped us fixed our cost. On the other 
hand, the fixed cost probably would have been higher than what we ended up 
paying. The numbers:

Total anticipated development cost: approximately $5,000,000.
Total anticipated architect fees: around $140,000.
Common fixed price agreement for architects: between 5 - 10% ($250,000 - 
500,000).

We did draft a modified version of the standard AIA contarct between architect 
& client, but AQA has not taken the time to review it, and we have not pushed 
them.  The contract would mostly protect them (against suits, and so forth), 
and probably pay them more.  We do have the letters of understanding between 
us, so it's not like we are acting without ANY contract...

So far, the only two disadvantages of not working under a fixed price contract 
seem to be that the architects are not very willing to absorb some costs that 
might be arguably considered to be because of their errors, and we don't have a 
firm final costs for our budget. On the other hand, they also do a fair amount 
of work for free, and the over-all costs are lower than otherwise. They seem to 
be sharing about equally in the stress and pressure of the whole process - I 
only occaisionally worry about over-burdening them by our arrangement.

Developer stories:

We tried to work out a site with a developer, but couldn't come to an 
agreement. It's hard to say what profit he was working towards: he was very 
unwilling to be detailed about his costs. Looking back, I'd guess he was 
looking for about a  15% profit. He had an architect on staff who's fees would 
have been included, but we would have had absolutely minimal customizations & 
very simple base plans. We were trying to work out a way we could have our own 
architect working directly for us, but the developer didn't want to be in the 
position of being a 'mere builder'.   

By not having a developer we have saved a lot of money in the overall 
construction budget. In exchange, we had to come up with a lot of cash between 
the 24 households (almost a million to date), and we have had a lot less 
certainty about costs (other than the growing certainty that we will all pay 
way more than we expected...)

If you are working with a developer, I recommend having an independently hired 
professional to speak his lingo & evaluate his statements and (maybe) do the 
negotiating. We hired a development manager (Bob Engler of Stockard, Engler & 
Brigham) for this, and it helped us immensely in sorting out reasonableness 
from bull. Good luck. 

Jim_Snyder-Grant [at] crd.lotus.com