New Construction

What an architect costs for a house — fee models and honest ranges (5–15% of build cost, ~$2–15/sq ft), what drives the number, and when the fee pays for itself.

Building permit timelines for a new house range from 2 weeks to 9 months — and the reason that range is so wide is that permits are issued by individual jurisdictions, not states. Your timeline is determined by four variables: where you're building, what you're building, how complete your submission is, and how busy your plan checker is.

Understanding those variables won't give you a guarantee, but it will give you a realistic range — and enough control to avoid the delays that derail most projects.

How much land you need to build a house depends on four variables — your house's footprint, your jurisdiction's zoning minimums, the setbacks that reduce your buildable area, and the physical constraints of the site itself.

For most suburban and rural lots, that puts the answer somewhere between a quarter-acre and two acres — but no two lots are the same. This guide walks through each variable so you can size land for your specific project before you make an offer.

On a residential project, an architect is the single professional responsible for translating what you want to build into something that can actually be built — and for holding that responsibility across every stage of the process. That role unfolds across six phases: pre-design, schematic design, design development, construction documents, permitting, and construction administration.

The phases are largely consistent. What varies is how many of them a given architect is contracted to cover. Full-service means all six. Partial engagement — design only, or permit drawings only — is common and legitimate, depending on project complexity and client need. The mistake is not knowing which you've hired for, because the phases are interdependent, and the gaps between them are where residential projects most often go wrong.

Choosing a roofing system is one of the earliest structural decisions in any residential build — and one of the most consequential. Get it wrong and you're looking at chronic maintenance problems, energy inefficiency, or a roof that fights your design at every turn. Get it right and it becomes invisible, which is exactly what a good roof should be.

This guide covers the three main residential roof types — flat, double-pitched, and mono-pitched — with a focus on what actually drives the decision: climate, budget, and the building itself.

Every drawing and schedule in a construction set — plans, sections, details, A/S/M/E/P disciplines, and the difference between a permit set and a complete one that protects your budget.

The four phases of designing a house, in plain English — what you receive and decide at each, and why every change gets more expensive the later it lands.