How much does it cost to remodel?

Have you heard the saying, "You can have it good, fast, or cheap, but you have to choose two." While it seems like a good idea to get the best deal when shopping for a kitchen or bathroom remodel, in the current market there is not a shortage of work for quality contractors. If you are consumer and are getting more than 2 or 3 bids, you will probably find that many contractors won't even bid. Consumers and contractors should focus on is value when determining the cost of a remodel project. 

The Best Price for Home Improvement

The best price is not the cheapest, the most expensive, or the middle of the pack. Some contractors can do it cheaper than their competitors and do it well. Unfortunately, a contractor that does not know how to properly price their services likely is not covering all of their obligations such as taxes, overhead expenses, and investing in the long term growth of their business. If you are a contractor and doing work for less than market averages as a strategy to get you more work, stop and think for a minute about whether you are profitable. 
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• You can do 100 jobs to make a million or you can do 10, which approach gets you closer to your goals? 
• If you collect a million dollars on a project but spend a million dollars to complete it, have you made any money? 

The Best Bang for Your Buck When Remodeling

Consumers and contractors should focus on value. As a contractor, what value are you brining to your clients and are you doing a good job of communicating why your process and pricing unique? As a consumer, you want to find the contractor who fully understands your vision and can best work with your budget. Neither contractors or consumers win when corners are cut in order to cram an unrealistic scope into a underfunded budget. 

• What is the scope of work? What do you want to have done in your home and what material specifications would you like to be included in the bid? 
• What is the budget for the project? While you may not want to share this, most contractors can tell you whether the budget you have is in sync with the scope you envision. 

Unrealistic Expectations for Renovation

As I share in my upcoming book, I think much of the modern consumer mentality is shaped by home improvement shows. What the customer expects is that we can walk through a house in five minutes or less and tell them, “This will cost $1,500 (seems like this is the magic number for everything) and my crew can start this afternoon.” Unfortunately this is not how things work in the real world. If you need to prove this to a client, you can find stories like this one from Fast Company that reveal these shows are selling “fantasy at best and nightmare at worst”.