commercial real estate is a architect or an engineer less costly

[Rita Neri]

Want to find out what the cost of estimating how many units are allowed in a newly zoned area of Hollywood Fl The new code is online . I understand this has to do with Parking, size of units, and Max building SF. I don't have plans, I just want to know the approximate max number of 325 SF hotel rooms that would be allowed. Would  I ask an engineer or an architect. Would an engineer or an architect be able to charge me a more reasonable price for this info?

[Nik Moushon]

You wont find your answer here, at least for who will charge less. You are going to have to shop around. Every office will give you a different number. 

With that said, personally, I would look at an architect to get that information. Ya, sure, technically an engineer could look up the code and figure that out but thats not their job. The architect is the one that does that research on a  daily basis, and odds are, they could give you an easy straight forward answer very quickly. Odds are though it is not going to be the numbers you end up with once you build it...no matter who gives the numbers. Just because code allows "X" number of hotel rooms, max, on your lot that does not necessarily mean thats what you will end up getting on there. So doing pro-forma numbers on a rough numbers based on code and not an actual development study will bite you in the rear more often than not. Doing big developments like this often require a large amount of upfront money for these kinds of services just to figure out the pro forma and feasibility study with no guarantee you'll get that money back. Don't skimp on paying for a development study on something like this. There are so many variables that determine what you can fit on a site. Shopping around for the lowest bid almost always ends up costing more in the end. That applies to pretty much everything and every scale.

PS - A little disclaimer, I work in the architecture profession, so I might be a little biased towards architects BUT I do my best to provide bias free suggestion and views.