here is no set fee arrangement for a particular type of project. Fees are established in a number of ways, depending on the type of project plus the extent and nature of services required from an architect.

Common methods of compensation include: hourly rates, a stipulated sum based on the architect's compensation proposal, a stipulated sum per unit of what's to be built (i.e., the number of square feet or rooms), a percentage of construction costs or a combination of these methods. Your architect will explain how a fee is to be established.

Experience is what comes from good architects. From the very start, they know what the new house or renovation will approximately cost.

Then, the basis for the fee, the amount and the payment schedule are issues for you and your architect to work out together.

The 1996 Means Square Footage Cost Data survey indicates that fees for architectural services on a custom house can range from 5 to 15 percent of the total cost of construction. Factors that affect the fees include the scope of the project, the level of quality and detail, and economic conditions.

The architect's fee is usually a relatively small part of the cost of the entire building project, including the actual construction cost (on which the fee is computed), the furnishings and equipment, and the interest paid on the mortgage. If you consider the cost of a house over a twenty-five year period, your actual expenditure is probably two and a half times the initial price tag. At right is a simplified hypothetical case for a new house.

The architect's fee, which is a one-time expense, is actually less than 3% of the cost of the house over a twenty-five-year period--not counting maintenance costs, which would reduce the architect's percentage even more. If the mortgage accounts for 75%, instead of the 50% indicated in this example, the architect's percentage, overall, would be reduced to around 2 percent. It is also worth noting that, even with a tight set of plans and specs, the range of prices in competitive bidding often varies by more than the amount of the architect's fee.