Our culture of fear is based on a profession that has not evolved over time, when it comes to business, and made the proper adjustments to make design a competitive commodity in the marketplace. Right now the Real Estate Agent is valued @ 6% because they are the info hub. The gossip girl. They know what will be selling before it's advertised. This is worth much more to people right now than a design. What have we done to make ourselves important? We can't even recognize that Housing makes much more money than Commercial. At the height of the building boom it made 200% MORE than Commercial. We wonder why the average Joe doesn't understand us and we're designing maybe 3% of the houses, mostly for the wealthy. I'm NOT advocating we require stamps on houses (yet), so please keep that discussion to yourself right now. Before we make that requirement, we need enough of us designing houses to make that venture realistic. Most of us see the final fee for a single project as a sign of success, but we fail to understand the concept of dollars per hour. I make more money per hour designing unique, Architectural Spec houses than I do high end houses and especially commercial work. Designing for builders is easy and requires much less info in the drawings. You get in and get out and get paid! No fussing with indecisive home owners draining your fee per hour.
How do we make design more important? Important how? Sentimental value isn't getting you paid any better. We need the market to recognize there is a difference between a commodity like a Structure that is a site made product built by a company with a business model and a piece of land that is valued as part of a Location, a value based on the sales of a community of Properties. Location, location, location is the mantra of real estate, but no one buys a Location, they buy a House. All realtors will tell you Curb Appeal is 90% of the sale. No one buys a house that isn't appealing to them. When you combine the fluid market value of the dirt (Lot) with the value of a site made product (Structure), we treat both commodities as if they are the same when it comes to value. Currently we average the recent neighborhood sales of the whole Property (Lot+Structure) to determine the value of the next project. That appraisal is used by the bank to determine the loan amount. Those who sell their houses for the highest price will have their next loan based on the average, pulling them down to the middle, while those who sell for less have their value pulled up to the middle. We punish success and reward failure. This is why the Housing Industry has been a race to the bottom. This is why we stepped away from Housing (whether we realize it or not). What we bring to the table typically makes houses more desirable, but selling for the most actually hurts you because your one high sale can be used by your entire Community of Competitors as a Comp, bringing their value up for doing nothing. You spend more money on quality and they didn't and they still get credit, just for being your Competitor.
A BMW is taxable property and one can park it in a bad neighborhood or a nice one and it's still the same car with the same value. Architecture can be portable. We have Mobile Homes, Modular Houses, Shipping Container Houses. Why should these commodities NOT be valued as independent items from the land they happen to sit on? Gee, wouldn't it be more productive and accurate to track the sales history of the site made product, separately from the fluid value of the land? Companies with strong sales histories could have their next product valued based on THEIR OWN sales, not the average of their Community of Competitors. This would make builders want to compete with design. I know this because the guys building the same "custom" house over and over, always have the lower sales in my area. People don't want to live in the same house as their neighbor and will pay more for a unique home. We need to learn how to reach regular people and we're not going to do it by insisting on expensive stuff or providing drawings they can't possibly afford. We can lower our fees and scope of service to make ourselves affordable without losing worth. Our problem is that we think we need to do more work for less clients, but I'm doing the opposite. I'm finding more clients that never considered an Architect before by lowering fees and cutting services they don't need and I end up making more per hour! I know many of us like picking unique products that no one else has incorporated into their work before, making their project stand out for a lot more $$$. $Cutting edge design$. I call that shopping $$$. I believe good design is taking the same kit of parts and arranging it better than the other guy/gal.
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Eric Rawlings AIA
Owner
Rawlings Design, Inc.
Decatur GA
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