Architect plans way over budget

Did you do your own research to see if your budget was realistic? A quote at three times your budget seems insane.
Surely your architect engaged a Quantity Surveyor to price the job? This should be a line by line detailed costing and not indicative.

We are about to start a job and from scouring the internet, it looks like costs in Dublin will be about 4k per sqm for extension and anything from 2-3k per sqm for deep retrofit renovation. Our budget is within this range, but could go over.

The quotes on Room to Improve do not reflect reality. The construction professionals are trying to make themselves look good, so the prices are lower.

In our case, the job will be so expensive and the finished house will not be worth what we are investing into it. This goes against good financial advice of course. However, it's our forever home and we will be staying here for the foreseeable. It's a good area, so we think for us, it's worth it.

From what I have learned, builders will not entertain you unless there is a healthy profit in the job. Now that prices have stabilized, it might be easier for them to work this out.

Haven't watched Room to Improve in years, but when I did only the Quantity Surveyor on the project seemed to operating in the real world.

On last nights show, they were operating on a particularly low budget for the scale of the job.

They seemed to get lots of grants like "Help to Buy" - which I believe is strictly for new builds, so not sure how they qualified for that?

They didn't reveal the final cost, so it's fantasy stuff. Maybe they found the extra money in the cowshed.

@CPM_81 Would Architects generally engage a QS? Wouldn't that usually be the Client that does this, with the builder doing it their side?

I have a certain amount of sympathy for the architects. A lot of the time people do actualy come up with the extras to go significantly beyond the initial extimated budget, that's just the reality. And it isn't the job of an architect to price something - agreed though they would/should have a fair idea.

The other thing is it the range of pricing, we did a big job in 2023 and once of the quotes we got was 50% more expensive than 3 other quotes. And one was very low balled. What type of quote should they be designing towards? With prices rising steadily in the last few years, how are they supposed to "keep up" when it's not even their job to price things?

Also, some of the finishes or client decisions have a huge impact on price. Windows, for example. You can go for one of the 2 big/expensive companies, or one of the Irish named ones from down south. There could be 20k difference. All these decisions add up and can materially impact the ultimate price. Decisions around insulation, heating etc all impact price. Not to mention kitchens, bathrooms, flooring, tiles etc.

The other thing is there's a lot of info out there to allow the client to take an amount of responsibility themselves. Speaking for myself, I knew what ballpark we were in having read newspapers, threads online etc. I find it hard to believe that you genuinely felt what he was designing could come in for what you said the budget was when it came in 2.7x the budget. Were you not forewarned of this when it came in 2.4x the budget? Part of this is the cient re-iterating the budget, making sure the architect truly understands. As in, ask him what the new build and refurb square metres are and then ask is reasonable to expect what he's proposing to fit.

David_Dublin said:

@CPM_81 Would Architects generally engage a QS? Wouldn't that usually be the Client that does this, with the builder doing it their side?

Click to expand...

In our case, our Architect is putting us in touch with a QS they work with all the time, but yes, it's absolutely up to the client to engage the professionals at each stage of the job.

CPM_81 said:

On last nights show, they were operating on a particularly low budget for the scale of the job.

They seemed to get lots of grants like "Help to Buy" - which I believe is strictly for new builds, so not sure how they qualified for that?

They didn't reveal the final cost, so it's fantasy stuff. Maybe they found the extra money in the cowshed.

Click to expand...

I wondered about this too...but I think they dropped this off the final budget and the only grants were SEAI and Vacant homes. As first time buyers they were probably trying to maximize anything they could in terms of grants so maybe it was possible at the initial stages but the vacant homes was more valuable.