Ah. Now I am beginning to see what each of us tends to believe:
That EACH of us, and perhaps ONLY us, does indeed add value to each of OUR projects, but the work of other architects is highly questionable. Okay.
This introspectiveness is what is dividing our profession then.
We each appear to be the arbiter of good taste and we alone will decide that for ourselves and our work is better than anyone else's and only we are purveyor of goodness, right, truth and justice for the American marketplace.
God help us all.
I had started this thread: Architects Add Value to Home Design, (in general)
hoping against hope that this simple and self-evident fact would be something upon which we could agree.
It appears we cannot. Good Lord.
Did anyone see the "(in general)"? and notice that there are always exceptions to the rule? I was hoping and praying that we, as leaders in the profession, could at least agree on the simplest of rationales for what we value.
I guess we can't even do that. I had hoped that if we could do this, that this could be a piece of bedrock on which we could stand and build from this simple, positive agreement.
This was an experiment of sorts. I once knew someone who was the most contrary person. So, on a beautiful, cloudless day, I thought of a way to perhaps establish a means of starting to agree on something: I said to him: "Good morning! Nice day today, huh?" And I wondered how he would respond. By saying something like: "Yeah..." at the very least? Nope. True to the contrariness, his comment was: "Well, I think its going to rain."
And so goes the way of the AIA and its licensed residential architects. We have proven ourselves to be a group of people who only value what we ourselves do. We cannot find it within ourselves to even agree with a simple obvious statement like: "Architects Add Value to Home Design (in general)." And if we cannot at least find it within our hearts, minds and souls to agree on the most basic concepts of what I had hoped would be self-evident, then I fear we may be doomed in whatever we set out to accomplish, because we are proving to ourselves that we cannot agree on anything (like the US Congress and Senate, congratulations, folks), including the most basic of reasons for our very existence.
So: let's all enjoy our own, restricted viewpoints of what we see in the mirror; hallelujah & whoopee.
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Rand Soellner AIA
Architect/Owner/Principal
Rand Soellner Architect
Cashiers NC
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Original Message:
Sent: 08-27-2012 09:19
From: Eric Rawlings
Subject: Architects Add Value to Home Design (in general)
Rand,
You and I have had a disagreement about this subject, not because I doubt the fact that Architects add value, but because value is not as absolutist as you portray it to be. We can't just say ALL Architects should be worth 20% more. We are not all equally talented in design or business. Some of the most talented designers among us may not recognize an appropriate solution in terms of dollars and cents and often "over-build" or design projects that cost more to build than the demographic in that area can afford. This doesn't create extra value for the buyer. Often these "nicer" houses sell for less than construction cost because no one is willing to pay more than the appraised value. You're trying to over simplify a very complicated concept.
Think about this...if there was a simple check box on the appraisal form that said ANY licensed Architect automatically adds 20% value to the project, then wouldn't you think builders are going to seek out the lousiest Architects to rubber stamp their buildings for the cheapest price? This would hurt those who are talented and more expensive because everyone is the same when it comes to the check box. This would encourage a bunch of lousy designers to get licensed, just to check boxes for builders. It would create a race to the bottom, just like appraisals do when everyone gets averaged against recent sales.
Aside from the fact that you'll never convince anyone outside the field of Architecture to believe that we should just give automatic value to ANY Architect, we want this to be based on competition. This is what allows the cream to rise to the top. The more talented Architect whose work resonates with the market place should be adding more value than some hack that barely passed the ARE. I know you think it simplifies things to make a check box that makes us all generic, but this simplicity isn't enough when it flies in the face with how value works. Again, even a product with a known value, like a $30K Nana Wall system, doesn't automatically give a house $30K in value, so why should we think the Lenders, Appraisal Boards, and over a dozen Gov Agencies are going to agree to give us a flat value add? Each property is different and so is the value of each Architectural solution. A check box doesn't fix the problem with the valuation of houses.
We're only designing maybe 3-5% of all houses being built. Why would the powers that be have any concern about us adding value at a time when they're still trying to figure out how to squeeze more value out of the market place? The Housing Crisis had one simple root cause. The price of houses as much as doubled in a 6-8 year period while wages stayed the same. All the other stuff like mortgage backed securities, was a reaction to the average person being priced out of a basic necessity like shelter. Averaging a community of competitors who build houses punishes the 3-5% of us designing nicer houses and also rewards the +80% of homes built by those using the Walmart model of over saturating the market place with the cheapest houses. Both problems go hand in hand and they could have the same solution. Because a single high sale can be used as a comp by 4-5 builders building 10 houses at a time, that single sale now disproportionately adds value to 40-50 projects who all have a sales history that matches their business model of trying to undercut their competitor's price by building more of the cheapest copies. According to land valuation philosophy, when the price of improvements (houses) goes up, so does the value of the land in that area. The most widely used comparison approach to value allows these 40-50 houses to gain a combined value for the land and improvements because a single property sells at the top price and it's fair game as a comp on everyone's appraisal. The land by itself in the area should gain a small amount value, but one competitor's house by itself shouldn't gain value because their more successful competitor's product sold for a higher price at market. This is why I advocate the concept of providing a separate value for the land and the improvements, so consumers, designers, agents, lenders, and builders all understand exactly what is valuable and we can track what is gaining value. The Appraiser's less used Cost Approach already does this and the Tax Assessor uses this format as well. I believe a hybrid system of the Cost and Comparison Approach could be used on new houses that would more accurately gauge competitive behavior of companies providing competing products. Combining the price of two very different items like land and houses makes the valuation confusing and allows fraud and errors to go unchecked.
The Appraisal system is broken and contradicts itself in terms of economic philosophy. The root cause of the Housing Crisis can be found in the fundamental philosophy behind valuing new spec houses. If we fix the problem of over valuing the majority of houses that happen to sell for the least, we also fix our problem of a few nicer houses being undervalued. The approach to valuation of older houses shouldn't be the same as the approach to newer houses being sold as products by competing companies. New cars are valued differently than used cars. Because the appraisal system essentially averages the sales in the area to determine value, everyone ends up in the middle. The lowest seller gets pulled up and the higher gets pulled down. As described above, this gives disproportionate amounts of value to the majority of houses who are playing the game of selling the lowest priced house. It creates a race to the bottom. This is no different than giving every Architect the same value bump on all appraisals. It will create a race to the bottom and degrade our profession. The Architect who designs the most valuable houses to the market place in their area, should be rewarded and the one who rubber stamps a lousy design should be punished by the market place. It shouldn't be up to the check box, the value of an Architect should be up to the buyers. Personally, I find this attitude of automatic value to be a sign of fear of putting our work to the test. A balance of good design and a high sale to construction cost ratio is the challenge when it comes to the value of design. We often over look the latter because we're most interested in good design at any cost and we often mistake monetary value with sentimental value.
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Eric Rawlings AIA
Owner
Rawlings Design, Inc.
Decatur GA
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