Don’t make this mistake when getting a renovation quote

As a contractor, there’s nothing worse than spending weeks, sometimes months, meeting, dreaming, planning, and quoting a project only to see a potential client choose another contractor.

When we lose out on a project, we always follow up to ask if we could’ve improved anything in our overall process. Was something unclear? Was a part of our process unhelpful? Did an interaction cause you to lose trust? The overwhelming majority of the time, the answer isn’t any of those things. Can you guess what it is?

Price.

Now, we would never begrudge anyone to pursue cost savings. Everyone likes saving money. We like creating cost efficiencies that save our clients money. As a contractor specializing in large-scale renovations, additions, and new builds, we understand you’re entrusting us with maybe the biggest financial investment of your life. We take that very seriously.

However, one of the things we always ask a potential client before they pursue a quote based solely on price is one simple question:

Are your quotes comparing apples to apples?

Or put another way: did each quote account for everything that needs to be included in your project? Because if not, you don’t have the ideal quote; you have an incomplete quote at an unrealistic price point.

To reiterate: saving money = good experience.

Saving money on a lower quote only to see the price go up and up = a very bad experience.

So, how do you get the ideal quote? Let’s take a look at the four key aspects of the ideal renovation quote:

Budget

This one’s pretty straightforward. Your contractor should have your budget in mind when estimating the job. As an aside, here is some free advice: don’t ever withhold your budget and ask a contractor to quote a job “to see where the costs will land.” To be candid, it’s disrespectful to the contractor and can be a waste of time for you and the contractor. Your responsibility as a potential client is to provide a budget you are willing to pursue and allow your contractor to tell you if it’s realistic.

Cost

It’s the contractor’s responsibility to put together the costs for the renovation based on the scope you’ve discussed. However, due to the complex nature of large-scale work, it’s the client’s responsibility with the contractor to confirm that everything you want is included in the quoted costs. Even if you don’t know the first thing about construction, you can ask specific questions based on your project to confirm all the costs are included.

Trust

Trust is an intangible but necessary aspect of how your renovation is quoted. Some great questions to evaluate trust for the ideal quote:

• Is the information in the quote thorough and detailed, in both finish and rough work?

• Are there any glaring omissions I can see in the quote?

• Are the important items we previously discussed included?

• Do the allowances (fixtures, finishes, cabinetry, countertops, etc.) reflect my ideal price point?

Needs (spoiler alert, this is the biggest mistake people make)

This is, without a doubt, the biggest mistake clients make in comparing renovation quotes. It’s easy to confirm a budget, and it’s easy to pull together costs for a project. But you must consider the house's needs to have the ideal quote. We see this oversight done in three primary ways.

Not pricing for the long-term health of the home.

For example, if you’re doing a home addition, you can tie into the existing HVAC system, but more likely than not, that’s not what the quote needs. It most likely needs either a larger unit to handle the added square footage or a mini-split (a smaller unit to handle a specific part of the home) and its own ductwork. You may get two quotes, with one being 15K cheaper because the HVAC isn’t included, but once you finish the project, you’ll notice that you have a system that is overtaxed and can’t heat and cool your home.

Not accounting for the age and state of the home.

Another example of not pricing in needs is not considering the home's age in the estimate. If you want to do a kitchen renovation and your electrical system is clearly from the ’60s, you can technically keep the existing system. Still, most likely, you’ll need to rewire the home as well as (most likely) update the existing electrical panel to handle the larger electrical load that modern appliances require. So again, you may see a significant difference in one quote compared to the other, but you may then have breakers tripping and lights flickering all over your home once you finish your renovation.

Pricing for the unrealistic.

No renovation project goes perfectly because no home is perfectly built. We can say with 100% certainty that you will run into problems during your project. While certain problems cannot be foreseen, an experienced contractor should be able to use their skill set to adjust the costs to handle these problems. On the (again, very rare and not likely) off-chance that we don’t run into any issues, that is money you save on the back end!

Pricing solely to win it.

The last way we see not quoting for the home’s needs is pricing solely to win the job. Another way of saying this would be to price at such a bare-bones level that it’s beyond what is reasonable. A classic example of this is placeholder amounts for allowances. Allowances are the costs you control - so a bathroom would include tile, vanity, fixtures, etc. As a contractor, you could technically add a placeholder cost, for example, tile for $3 sq/ft. You can absolutely get tile for this cost. You are, however, massively limiting the type of tile a client could pick out. If you price for the absolute bare bones on every selection item - whereas another contractor is pricing based on “typical” allowance costs (for example, for tile, we have a placeholder of $12.40), you could be looking at two dramatically different quotes. Another example is excluding things that aren’t absolutely necessary, but common sense implies they should be included. For example, you don’t have to have all the hooks, bars, knobs, and pulls included in a bathroom quote, but you’d want them right?

Conclusion

Not all quotes were created equal, and oftentimes, in comparing renovation quotes, you’re not even comparing apples to apples. So before you sign on the dotted line for your renovation, make sure the quote considers your budget, includes all the costs, cultivates trust, and (most importantly) takes into account not just what you want but what your house needs.