[autophil]

How do y'all break down the pricing on your designs?

I'm working in a custom home community with a PITA HOA and I'm pondering the breakdown of the plan pricing.

Retainer fee?
% due upon plan submittal to HOA?
% due upon plan approval by HOA?

*we should be careful not to discuss specific pricing, just general terms (big brother is always watching, or some cafone will tip him off).

Thanks,
Phil

[Dale Wiley]

Why would you wait until approval for any portion of your money????

PITA???.. then you want them to approve your design before they pay you the remaining due ??

We get it ALL up front. They get one revision not to exceed X number of hours with that......

And for all you design people that smacked me for getting
$ 950 for an $ 18,000 job...

I just got one for $ 2,000 for a $ 50,000 + job....

[agla]

It comes up to writing a good design contract that spells out what you are going to do and a schedule of payment. The schedule has to be in terms that are indisputable - ie, at the first draft review meeting rather than when it is half done or other arguable language.

You should show a $ rate for anything that goes beyond the contract. That keeps them from dragging things out because of the fear of added expense.

Again, it all hinges on a well written contract.

[saslandscape]

Dale...I'm in awe...how are you able to charge so much for your designs??

I would definitely ask for the money up front, especially if they're PITA's (my favorite type of client ). PITA's should always get "special" treament, in my opinion. Plus, you don't want to have to be calling them, trying to collect the rest of your design fee after they already have the plan.

[mrusk]

Dale if you are truly getting that much money for a design on a 50k job, you might want to think about JUST doing design work and quit doing the execution!!

[agla]

There are designs with a few plants laid out around a house and there are designs which are way more time consuming and hold a lot more responsibility. Two grand is not an astronomical price depending what goes into it and what comes out of it.

There is no "going rate". Rate is limited first by whom you work for, second by your ability, and third by what else is going on in your market.

Basically, it comes down to what you are worth to the person with the potential to pay you. If the person does not value design work in the first place, your abilities are not going to get you much bread no matter what. If they do value landscape design, then there is potential.

If you are good at the same kind of work and the same style the potential client is looking for, you are still in the game. If you can show the prospect that you understand them, know your stuff, and give them enough information to make feel they want to work with you, you are still in the running. If no one shows up that they feel is a better match for them, you have a shot at it.

I think that one of the misconceptions is that most guys think that whatever they do for design is the same thing that someone else is doing for whatever the price it is that they get. Meaning that if you blast out a basic planting plan in two hours for free or $100 and hear that someone else got $2,000, you think it was for a similar effort, a similar scope of work, and with a similar skill set. But was it?

$2k on a $50k job can be working cheap just as easily as it can be making good money. It can be money well spent by the client just as easily as it can be a complete waste of money.

In general, no one is willing to pay more than something is worth and no one is willing to part with something of value without getting paid. That pretty much means your designs are not worth any more or any less than you are getting for them ..... from the people who you are working for.


If you think getting $2k per design is making a living, think it through. Before taxes and overhead, you need 25 of those to gross $50k. Getting 25 leads for pure design work is hard enough to get in a year if you are not a nursery, garden center, or design/build. Landing 25 would not be so easy and you would not be netting close to $50k. Still willing to give up selling plants and stone along with your hours?

Even if you do get plenty of jobs, you have to realize that a $2k design job does not get whipped out in a four or five hours. On top of that you usually have to meet with the potential client and walk the site before you can write up a proposal to do the design. Writing a good design contract means that it has to be very specific to cover your butt. That can take a considerable amount of time. Both of those take time whether or not you get the job. When you do a full plan on an existing building site, there is a lot to measure and that means a lot of time especially if accuracy matters. All of that means a lot of hours for those $2k jobs and a lot of that time is often spent trying to get the next job. (this is the reason that not every lead is worth pursuing).

Don't get hung up on making money on design if you are a design/build especially if you are a "full service" company. The biggest benefit is that if you get a "design" job, you have a huge advantage in landing that "build" job over anyone else unless you are not close to competitive. If you can sell quick designs at prices that cover your costs, it is great marketing as long as your not taking away from your production.

If you try to charge $2k per design and you aren't getting the work and your slow, it is really foolish to try to get that money. You'll make much more doing the design for peanuts and making $3k on marked up materials and another $3k of your laborers.

If you are managing a full landscape business, you really don't have time to develop full high end landscape plans because they do take a lot of time. When these design leads come along, you should have a trusted designer who specializes in this work to help you land the job and upsell it in the process. It makes sense to let him make the money on the design (as long as you can trust him not to take the job elsewhere) and for you to make money on the build.

[autophil]

Thanks for the replies.

It's the HOA that's a PITA, not the clients.

agla is right, $2K is not a lot of money, especially for a real landscape plan on a custom lot/custom home. I'm not talking about scribbling some plants in the backyard of a tract house, I'm talking contour lines, recycled water, native (sacred) oaks, and a whole bunch of particular stuff from the HOA...some of it completely valid and some of it completely nonsensical.

[Alberto]

[i]......

I just got one for $ 2,000 for a $ 50,000 + job.... [/b]

Wow! That's great!! Are you a LA? Your market and client base must be unbelievably different that what I encounter! I have people walk out the door at $150.00 for a plan! BTW I would LOVE to see what a $2000 landscape plan looks like!

[Dale Wiley]

agla answered all questions presented to me quite well.

And the job went to over $ 100,000 based on a few phone calls.

The client found us on a Goggle search, and the site is located in an up and coming resort / second home area about 55 miles from our shop.

As I finish this post, I am getting in my pickup and driving over there to get the site data.

I will have a minimum of 3 trips to the site before the plan is presented. I will have at least 16 design hours, Fed Ex fees to the client, and probably a couple of changes.

The client went with the local "landscaper" and said they were all flakes. I am not in awe of this clients 2nd home and its value.( 1.5 million plus, not that much in this area.) I am looking at property about 5 miles away in a farm zone.

The client already has a perception of value with my company. He has already made a decision to purchase landscape services, its up to me to steer him the right way, and make sure I fulfill his perception of value.

The $ 2000 plan will be your basic drawing converted to blue print, with several details, grading, planting and irrigation. I hand that to the foreman, and we starting scheduling and mobilizing. This is really not a lot of money for a plan, since I regularly have engineers do sports field work for me and that usually starts at $ 5,000 for a simple football / soccer field detail.

When its approved and I get my first down payment, I will have the rented excavation equipment put on site, and we start. I have 6 months to complete the job, and will need every bit of it, as it gets a bit wet on the North Oregon Coast from Nov to April.

I am not a trained LA. My formal education was in Agricultural Engineering and Crop Science, and I added a Business Administration Associates after that, as well as 6 terms of Landscape Design. That and 28 years of getting my ass kicked in
the landscape business help me out a lot.

If you have people walk out on a $ 150 plan, you need better / different peo;ple to be walking in your front door. Place a true value upon yourself, your work and product. I don't do for $ 150.00

As for quiting installation...no way. We are trying to get out of the lower end of the market, and its a slow process, but the last 3 jobs we had all were mark up priced jobs, to upper end clients and the psychology of price sensitivity NEVER came up once.

A $ 2,000 design is just a plan for a project, nothing more or less. It mets the clients and site needs, but I strongly feel we can do a much better job than an off the wall contractor response to my plan.

I am glad some of you feel I am cutting a fat hog on this, but it really is a precursor to the real job, and not a true make a living thing.

[mrusk]

Dale- When i hear a 2k design fee for a 50k job, it just makes my head spin. A 50k job is what now? A raised patio, with some plants, lighting and maybe a fire pit? 50k does not go far. But if the job ended up going for over 100k, 2k for the design fee is pretty close to the ballpark.

[Inspired]

Autophil:

I work out progress payments like agla mentioned. You can add as many stops and payments along the way as you need them. I usually get a substantial percentage for a retainer. I don't ask for the full amount up front because I give the customer an estimate of what I think the design will cost and my hourly rate. I try to stay close to the estimate but many times the customer makes changes or expands the entire job like Dale mentioned.

Retainer -
Draft -
Completed concept -
HOA approval -
Permit approval -
Final working drawing w/details & contractor copies -
As built drawings -


As far as $2,000.00 for a design on a 50k job, it could be a fat log like Dale said or minimum wage depending on the job. It's tough to compare two designers much less two design jobs.

I will say that I haven't spent less then 8 hours on a landscape design in a long, long time. Dale said he estimated he'll spend at least 16 hours on the job he just quoted. From the sound of it, I'll bet he ends up going over that.

[agla]

I have a $1,500 residential and a $2,000 portion of a cond redo in my own office right now. The condo job has been in phases. This is the fourth phase.

The condo plans are plan views with no elevations and no grading, but there is a huge amount of measuring time and assessment of what to keep and what must go. Measuring all of the locations and sizes of existing plants accurately is very important because I need to fit plants in between others with good results. It sounds like a gravy train, but I really do earn the money. That is obvious simply because this is the fourth time they have hired me.

Part of the challenge is designing to improve aesthetics and reduce maintenance costs at the same time. They have most likely already saved enough on maintenance expenses to pay my design fees. That is tangible value that they know they are getting from the investment on top of the plans that enhance the old tired landscape.

Another thing that I do is to get everyone on the board to follow my direction based on all of their input rather than to continue to argue amongst themselves or for me to try to just tell them what I think looks good. That has value and not every one out there drawing plans can do that.

I only mention this to illustrate the point that there has to be a client who sees at least equal value in what you are going to do for them as they are paying you to do it, just as Dale is trying to say. If I just went around winging in plants to fill the empty spaces the value would not be there and they would not be interested in paying my fee.

Joe Homeowner in a $400k house is not going to value a landscape plan at $2k very often. Even if he values the design, there are enough design/build guys out there that want that "in" on getting the built work, so there really is no reason for him to pay that much. I can't take the time to do that for $300 or $500 because I am not going to sell any product or labor, so I'd lose my backside on it. That means that I'm not even going to take the time to write up a proposal because that would also be a waste of my time. Its not because I think I'm too good or the homeowner is too cheap. It is because there is an alternative for that client which is a better value to him. It is that simple.

[PSUscaper]

Pricing is pretty simple. Its determining what exactly the client expects that is tricky.

I just looked at a project where the client wants a paver walkway around his 3 acre lot to be used as a jogging trail, along with a water feature that may be 70 ft long by 30 ft high.

The thing with this is what is the plan worth. Just becasue it may be a 75k paver walkway, does that mean it is going to be a 2k design???

Honestly, I may just take the site plan, sketch the walk on there, and then go to the site with paint and mark it out while walking with the client.

What I hate hearing hear is everyone is relating dollar value of the project with dollar value of the design.

I have spent 10x's longer on a small 10k intricate garden design than I have with a 100k paver driveway design.

The price of the project has nothing to do with the design fee.

as for the orignal question, I would break it down into a simple base fee for the design with 2 planned revisions. Any additional revisions become extra, along with any changes in the scope of project ( such as enlarging areas) , and any site visits which would be billed hourly, and I do charge for travel time on that.

[PSUscaper]

"As for quiting installation...no way"

I love you dale. About a month ago you told us about how the installation market was absolutely dried up in your area and now your making it a prority to stay in it. What happened to 'we are focussing all our efforts to turf field work"? . What happened to 'hard economic times' in your area and the lack of work due to the economy?

I like the idea of focussing on turf work and thought that was the way you were going. I get nervous when I hear someone say a 100k job is going to take 6 months.

I know you are going to explain what you mean by this, and most likely get mad at me for saying something again, but that is what you typed, so sorry if I question what is going on. I believe you when you say you get these fees for your design work, but when you bounce around with everything else, it hard to take it seriously.

[autophil]

Okay I guess I've settled on this:

$X retainer fee
$X upon completion of plans (submittal to HOA)
$Y upon approval by HOA

I just signed a deal this morning for a $2K plan, and that's low for this community (typically). What can I say...the market sucks.
We've got cafone homeowners telling us that what they're looking for is "simple" and "not worth as much as the plans for the rest of the neighbors", and all we can do in such a lousy market is either take the deal or take a pass. It's a tough call sometimes, but if not for the pseudo-rich people in the so-called rich neighborhoods, landscape and pool construction would just about come to a halt around here.