Why builder quotes for the same drawings come back different

You send your drawings to three builders and wait. The quotes come back, and they are thousands apart. Now you are worried, because if the drawings are the same, how can the prices be so different, and who is telling you the truth?

It is the most common worry in building, and the answer is reassuring once you understand it. The gap is almost never one builder being genuinely cheaper. It is what each quote contains, and what it quietly does not.

Drawings show what to build. They do not fix how each builder prices it, what they assume, or what they include.

Two honest builders can price the same set differently based on their trades, their availability and how they read the site. That is normal. The problem is that some of the gap is not about any of that. It is about what has been left out to make a number look smaller.

Three places account for most of the gap between quotes. Learn them and you can read any quote you are handed.

• Allowances. Placeholder figures for things not yet chosen, like tiles or tapware. A low allowance shrinks the quote today and grows later.
• Exclusions. The list of what the price does not cover. A shorter quote is often just a quote with more excluded.
• The work you cannot see. Waterproofing, preparation and the like, quoted to the minimum in one and done properly in another.
  

A quote that comes in well below the others usually is not better value. It is a quote with less in it, and the difference tends to arrive later as variations and extras.

The clearest example is the work behind the walls. Where most builders put two coats of waterproofing in a wet area, we put four, at our own cost. A builder pricing the minimum will always look cheaper on paper than a builder pricing the work done properly. On paper is not where you live.

Do not start with the bottom line. Start with the detail, and put the quotes side by side on the things that actually differ.

• Line the allowances up against each other and ask which are realistic.
• Read every exclusions list and note what one covers that another does not.
• Ask each builder how they handle the parts of the job you will never see.
• Ask what happens to the price when the site throws up a surprise.
  

The quote to trust is often not the lowest and not the highest. It is the one that is honest about what it includes, realistic in its allowances, and clear about what cannot be known yet.

A builder who walks you through all of that before you sign is showing you how they will treat you once the work begins. That is worth more than a smaller number on the front page.

If you want a quote you can actually read, broken down so you can see where the money goes, our For Architects page explains how we price and build. Bring your drawings, come and have a look at the work, and we will be straight with you about the number.