Architect Home Plans

Snuffy

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May 3, 2002
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Info. from Dominican who I believe I can trust for information...says that one can obtain the plans for a home for 10,000RD or less. And can obtain plans from a university in Santo Domingo for free. Now I don't know how small the house would be. And don't know if these are old plans that are usuable with a few updates.

It would make sense to me that there are plans that have already been created and can be used again and again. So one could take one of these and then have an architect make modificaitions you desire.

Reason I brought this up was I remember someone once telling me that the plans would cost X percentage of the cost to build the home. At the time I thought that fee was rather high and probably oriented toward gringos. Dominicans always know how to get it done cheaper.
 

bob saunders

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Jan 1, 2002
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My wife (dominican) had a set of plans drawn up for an apartment building, 3 story 7 apartments, with the engineers costs thrown in it was just under 100,000 pesos. Like anywhere, you get what you pay for. Usually if something is cheap, end product is inferior, rarely is something worth having, free.
 
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Snuffy

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May 3, 2002
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If a plan was drawn up originally for say 100K and that plan is eventually sold to some company specializing in recycling plans...is it not still a good plan? Trust me, they do this here. Even if no one wants to admit it. If they can get money for an old plan they are going to do it. I will bet I can find a nice little house, talk to the owner and cut a deal to get his plans at a very cheap price. I believe the only other factor to consider would be the soil type. There isn't a lot to building a house here. You can build, break apart, build, break apart, build break apart. Amazing how flexible that concrete and steal is when they want it to be.

Sometimes free can be good quality. Suppose your wifes cousin has built a similar type hotel on the other side of the country then he gives her the plan free.

I'm no expert and perhaps I am missing something here. I'm just saying that I believe expats can pay a lot more than a dominican to have a house built and the plano is one item where this can occur. In the USA we are accustomed to following our norm structures...we do what everyone else does. So you come here and you expect things are done in a similar way when planning to build a house or hotel. You expect the plan is drawn up fresh. I'm saying that I believe there is a lot of recycling that goes on. It just falls in line with their culture.

I would like someone to come on here and set me straight if I am completely out of line.
 

Pearl1

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Aug 29, 2005
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I designed my own house 4700 sq. ft. I had a Santiago architect redraw the plan in Spanish including the structural engineering for concrete construction so that we could get all the stamps for building permit and it cost me $3500.00 US.