bidding a remodel

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jm1470

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I was ask to bid on a house that is totally being renovated. I was talking to another contractor and he told me to charge by the square footage, he charges 5 dollars a square foot. This dosen't seem right I think I should charge per device. Please help
 
Per device is the only way. Pricing by the square foot can either cut you off at the knees or over-price your bid that you either won't make money or get any work.

A 200a service costs the same, whether the house is 1000 ft? or 3000 ft?, so how do you price the service out by the square foot?
 
Of course only by the device.
But....watch out for the demo work . BEFORE you get to be putting in the new stuff you will have some work to do. That has to be included. You may have 1 day of demo work or maybe you will have a week of demo work.

Are you moving the service?

Is it clearly stated what shape the walls and ceilings will be in when you are epxected to install the new wiring and devices?

Can you talk to the homeowner? Will someone be living in this house during the rehab? That will impact your demo work.

Be thorough and don't do any pricing by the square foot. You are not laying tile. Do a square foot analysis when the job is done for your info.
 
With sheet rock left on some walls or not.
How many recessed lights?
Their is a lot of variations on a renovation project.

Make several walk throughs. Go in the attic and crawl space.
Devide the job in to two. Figure how much material and time for the rough in. Think of how much profit you would like to make on the rough-in.

The trim out is harder to figure because you have to give the price before the job has started. . But do the same for the trim out. Know how much profit will make it a worth while job to do.

If you get the job when you sign the contract. Give the contractor or owner a hand full of blank change orders. With an hourly price.

Also if every thing is not ready when you are called to trim it out. That will be an hourly charge to come back.
 
jm1470 said:
I was ask to bid on a house that is totally being renovated. I was talking to another contractor and he told me to charge by the square footage, he charges 5 dollars a square foot. This dosen't seem right I think I should charge per device. Please help
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Don;t let the contractor tell you how to run your business.
 
jjhoward said:
Can you talk to the homeowner? Will someone be living in the house during the rehab? That will impact your demo work.
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If someone is living in the house you better get at least twice the money you would if it was empty because it's going to take at least twice as long.

First thing I look at on a house remodel is location. Can I park close to the house to unload tools and materials? Is it a bad neighborhood where if I leave any materials on the job they probably won't be there in the morning.

Even if no one is living in the house make sure that they have all thier stuff out of there and in storage or whatever. Then make sure that some idiot hasn't ordered everything that's going to be used on the remodel and it's all sitting in the way ( cabinets, bath fixtures, carpet, drywall, trim), all this stuff doesn't need to be there during rough-in but homeowners don't know that. Is the job being done by a professional remodeling contractor or a homeowner just hiring subs. Is the job going to be done in phases or all at once? Is there a good set of plans or is it going to be plan as you go?

Talk to whomever is doing the job and make sure they have a plan of action to actually finish the job. Then make sure there is actually money to finish the job.( It's a legitimate question ).

Once you know all the important stuff then you will get an idea of how much time and materials will be needed to complete the job. You can then compare this to the unit price for each device and fixture and see if you need to raise the price.

I like to know two things right off before starting a project. One is when they plan to start and the second is when the plan to finish. If they are professional they will have a pretty good idea of when they will be out of there. This makes it much easier to schedule the work.

Watch out for people that don't know what they are doing because they will drag the job out forever and you won't make any money no matter how much you charge.
 
jm1470 said:
I was ask to bid on a house that is totally being renovated. I was talking to another contractor and he told me to charge by the square footage, he charges 5 dollars a square foot. This dosen't seem right I think I should charge per device. Please help
Click to expand...

When you start buying wire cable and boxes, by the square foot, and your labor is, something a monkey can do, I would stick to the per piece pricing.
 
All good advice so far but,
Don;t let the contractor tell you how to run your business.
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Best advice yet.

The trouble with sq. ft. pricing is that you leave yourself open-ended where the homeowner can decide to add whatever they wish (i.e recessed lighting, double wall oven, etc.). If you're just throwing out a budget price and nothing that you can contractually be held to, then sq. ft. pricing is OK.
 
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