Contracts & Pricing
September 2026
5 min read
Two quotes for the same plans can sit tens of thousands of dollars apart. The expensive one is not always the safe one — but the cheap one is almost never the bargain it appears to be.
When quotes for the same project land far apart, the gap is not luck — it is arithmetic. Somewhere in the cheapest quote, something has been left out, under-allowed or under-resourced. The skill as a homeowner is finding it before you sign, because after you sign, the missing money comes back as variations, delays or corner-cutting.
The places the difference usually hides are unglamorous: site works priced for perfect soil that yours does not have, provisional sums set impossibly low, inclusions lists that quietly drop things like termite barriers, external taps or driveway reinstatement, and programs built on optimistic trade availability.
Our advice is always the same: put the quotes side by side and compare the inclusions line by line, not the totals. Ask each builder what is excluded. Ask how they handle variations. Ask who will be on site each day. A professional builder will welcome these questions — the answers are exactly what you are paying for.
We would rather lose a job to a cheaper quote than win it by pricing a build we cannot deliver. That is not sales talk; it is arithmetic. A builder who wins on a number they cannot build to will recover that money somewhere, and the only place it can come from is you.
A worked example from our own tendering. Two builders priced the same extension: one excluded the temporary kitchen, the deck reinstatement and the termite barrier; the other — ours — included all three, and the gap between the two quotes was almost exactly the value of those items. The client who took the cheap quote met each exclusion as a mid-build variation, priced at variation rates rather than tender rates, which is always more expensive.
Beyond inclusions, compare the program and the supervision. A quote built on a four-month program with one full-time site supervisor is a different product from one promising the same scope in ten weeks with a supervisor who visits twice a week. Neither price is wrong in isolation — but they are not the same product, and treating them as comparable is how budgets break. Ask each builder to walk you through their program line by line; the honest ones will enjoy the conversation.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Compare inclusions line by line, never the headline total
- Ask every builder for a written list of exclusions
- Unrealistically low provisional sums are a red flag, not a saving
- The cheapest quote is frequently the most expensive contract
