<p>what would i expect to make right out of college. If i get the better of the two degrees. What kind of money does frank lloyd wright make for a house. Im tryinng to get a better understanding of the profession in general really.</p>
<p>I have no idea what you would make if you were graduating today, but let’s say it is a more typical year like 2008. We were paying a new graduate with a professional degree between $40,000 to $46,000 a year with a bonus of 10% and a pension contribution of 5%. We really don’t differentiate between MArch and BArch for pay, we go more by school and quality of portfolio.</p>
<p>What do you get for designing a house? In my market a good firm would get a 10% of the construction costs as the gross fee. Take away 3.5% to pay for your engineers and you are left with a 6.5% net fee. A firm with a big national reputation might get as high as a 20% gross fee, and perhaps a 15% net fee. So as a local firm you would get about $130,000 to design a $2 million home.</p>
<p>A suburban office building would pay you about $2.00/square foot, take out the engineers and you are left with $1.50 per s.f. So a typical 4 story, 100,000 s.f. office building would get you about a fee of about $150,000.</p>
<p>So now you start an office, how much profit will you make? Most medium sized firms (20 to 50 people) will make about a 10% to 15% profit on their net income. This can get as high as 30% for very large firms, but that is rare. So let’s say you hire 10 employees and keep them all busy. Most firms will bill in the range of $115,000 per employee, per year. So if you managed to make a 15% profit on 10 employees it would amount to $172,500 of annual profit on top of your base salary as a sole proprietor. Of course your employees are going to want a bonus that has to come out of that number.</p>
<p>The profession is pretty simple. There is a range of profit you will make per employee that will not vary a great deal. So if you have a 10 person firm and make x in profit, then if you can grow the firm to 20 you will make 2x in profit. This is why so many firms focus on growth.</p>
<p>Of course in an economy like this, it is pure survival. Even the largest firms keep almost no money in the bank (it is distributed at the end of the year to partners and employees to avoid paying taxes on the gains), so there is no cushion and the layoffs become brutal. It is a very entrepreneurial and tough business. We are definitely not farmers waiting for our next crop, we are hunters and gatherers always searching for that next meal.</p>
<p>I hope that answers your question,
rick</p>