ADU Design Fees

[Alex U.]

Typically if an architect is designing a duplex ADU, with the same floor plan on the top and bottom. They may charge $8-12k.

If this design was going to be replicated 8 times, ie 16 units total, what is a fair cost to pay for design, given it is a copy and paste of the first one?

[Nik Moushon]

Quote from @Alex U.:

Typically if an architect is designing a duplex ADU, with the same floor plan on the top and bottom. They may charge $8-12k.

If this design was going to be replicated 8 times, ie 16 units total, what is a fair cost to pay for design, given it is a copy and paste of the first one?

 Architects designs are copyrighted just like artists paintings. So without their permission, legally, you can't reuse the same design over and over. It can be negotiated to be that way but be up front if you are going to do that. 

To your main question, its complicated. Is it all on the same site or 8 different sites? Each site is unique so that means 8 different site plans and a lot of other small things to double check and make sure everything works correctly. Even if its on the same site, every square foot of land is different from the next. Just lots of things to consider so its usually just time consuming things and not complicated design issues. 

If I was charging $10k for an duplex ADU, and have the same plan repeated 8x on the same site I would probably end up charging something in the $20-25k range. If it was all on different sites it would probably end up being $10k for the first and then probably charge hourly, around $3-5k is my guess, for each site, depending on the complexity of the site and the jurisdiction. The jurisdictions can waste so much of the architects/engineers time that it is very hard to predict.

And of course this is based on my local costs, not yours. So a local architect to you could be WAY different and be the normal price range for where you are.