Pricing
One set of plans. Five builders. Five different numbers.
Send the same drawings to five builders and the prices that come back can be nearly $200,000 apart. That is not five opinions about what your house is worth. It is five different sets of assumptions, and only one of them is going to survive contact with your actual build.
Seventy seconds on why the same plans come back priced so differently.
Four things that move a quote
None of these are tricks. They are ordinary parts of how building is priced, and knowing them is the difference between comparing quotes and guessing.
Allowances
A builder puts an allowance against anything not yet chosen - the kitchen, the tapware, the tiles. One builder allows a modest number, another allows a generous one, and the two quotes are now tens of thousands apart for identical drawings. Neither is lying. Only one of them is going to match what you actually pick.
Exclusions
The cheapest quote is usually the one with the most left out. Site costs, driveways, landscaping, window furnishings, connections. A quote is only comparable to another quote once you have read what each one excludes, and that is the page nobody reads.
Provisional and prime cost items
A provisional sum is our best estimate before a real supplier price exists. A prime cost item is a placeholder for a product you have not selected. Both are legitimate and both are adjustable, which means both can be set low to make a quote look competitive.
How much of it is a real price
Some quotes are priced from measured take-offs and actual trade quotes. Others are a square-metre rate with a margin on top. They can arrive on the same letterhead and look the same to you.
The cheapest quote and the dearest quote often end up at a similar number by the end of the job. The difference is whether you were told that at the start or found out on the way through.
How we price instead
Two estimates, in that order
The Qualifying Build Estimate (QBE) comes first. It is a paid proposal that puts an allowance or a dollar-per-square-metre value against each area of the project, and gives you an expected build spend range. We deliver it within seven days of the invoice being paid, then sit down with you for an hour to go through it.
The QBE exists to answer one question early: is the house you want achievable on the budget you have? Finding that out now, rather than after months of design, is the whole point.
The Letter of Engagement follows. It sets out each party’s roles, responsibilities and obligations, and is signed electronically.
The Final Build Estimate (FBE) comes once construction documents exist. It is our 100-point estimate, covering major component labour, contractor costs, materials and ancillary allowances. Where something is unclear we raise a Request for Information rather than guess. When the first draft is ready we walk you through every line item and keep refining until it matches your vision and your budget.
QBE turnaround
Seven days from payment
Final Build Estimate
100-point, walked through line by line
Deposit
5% of contract value
What open-book means
- You see the trade quotes the price is built from, line by line.
- Allowances are named as allowances, not buried in a lump sum.
- Every variation is priced and approved in writing before the work happens.
- When a provisional sum comes in under the allowance, the difference goes back to you.
- At handover you get every trade, finish and paint colour recorded in a pack.
And what it does not
Open-book does not mean we work for nothing, and it does not mean the cheapest number wins. We are a business and we price to stay one, because a builder who does not is a builder who does not finish your house.
What it means is that you are never guessing where your money went. The costs are put in front of you rather than behind a single figure, and you make the calls about where to spend with the real numbers in your hand.
Find out early whether it is achievable
The Qualifying Build Estimate exists to answer one question before you spend months on design: can the house you want be built on the budget you have?