Just bought the lot in Waynesville, North Carolina now looking for an architect and builder to work on small retirement home–limited budget. Recommendations?
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Welcome to breaktime!
Can't help with your question, but this response will help keep it showing up sooner for more people to see. It's called a "bump".
Good luck...buic
Ask around town for opinions. Since this is the FINE Homebuilding forum we can assume that you still want a quality home though you have a limited budget.
If you talk to enough people you should be able to compile a list of the best builders in the area. Any one opinion will be worthless in and of itself but the votes should pile up for the best ones. Then talk to the top of the list to see if you are a good fit. Then ask the builders for recommendations for an architect who can work with a limited budget. This may not be that easy to find.
One strategy that a number of our customers have used is to buy stock plans and have a local engineer bring them up to code compliance. The homeowners can usually do this for less than $2000.
Welcome Ross. To add to what Schelling said I build in Raleigh, and will say that we don't use architects for the houses we build - even ones that are say up in the 1.5 $mil range, and certainly not "affordable" housing. We use local house designers and then have the plans gone over and stamped by a PE (Professional Engineer) who specializes in residential construction. The stamp might cost $800 for a 2000 sq ft house. The house designer might charge $1800 for a complete plan set so that would be very roughly around $2600. A typical architects fee might be say7 to 15% which could be $30k on a $200k house! I'd say that you would want to use an architect if you want a home that is very unique and innovative, but this doesn't seem consistent with "small retirement home--limited budget". In other parts of the country architects on residential are common - or maybe even required. Not in NC.
I'd say start by looking around on the internet for a house plan that you find (mostly) appealing. There are 100s of plan web sites and after a while of looking you will start to see that many have slightly different renditions of the same plans. There is only so many ways to lay out a smaller house... Don't plan on buying plans off the internet though. If you do, you will likely need to have the plan re-drawn for local conditions and building practices anyway. The idea is to just get some kind of idea of what you want. Then find some local residential design firms - you may have to go to Asheville for that. These firms often have libraries of homes they have designed that you may find appealing, or they can start with your house ideas that you collected off the internet and produce a building plan set. Or you may even fiind a design/build firm.
I'm gonna make a guess that you have a pretty good handle on your budget but don't really know what you can get for your money. You might want to go look as some new construction homes that are for sale to get at least a rough idea. No reason to have a house designed that you can't afford. Knowing something about building costs in NC I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that you might spend $110 a heated square foot and $70 for unheated square footage like garage and porches. This is excluding land, site work, septic and well. Please understand that these numbers just an ESWAG and can be greatly effected by the finishes you want like siding type or brick, the of foundation, 1 story, 1.5 or 2, roof type, hardwood flooring, granite counter tops, kitchen appliances, etc, etc, etc.
BTW - a couple of BTers that live in your area are rasconc and dogfish so they might be able to give you some more specific references for local design and build firms.
Edited 8/3/2008 12:09 pm ET by Matt
go to cheif architect site