bids

hello everybody, I was wondering what advice you have on writing bids? I have a builder that want to use me on all their new homes and the only difference is the sqft. The homes will range from 2500 to 3600 sqft. I would like to give them one price for all…

Why would you do that?

The houses can vary quite a bit. They don’t sell them all for the same price. What if they start building 4,500sqft houses too? If the houses are all similar construction (same foundation type, etc.), and they want up-front pricing, I would quote a price/finished square foot.

I like that idea thank you Chuck.

Good advice if all are slab-on-grade or crawls. If an area with basements, you can easily double the sq/ft that is NOT included in “finished” calculations. Don’t get me started on 3-4 bay attached garages!! :wink:

Builders may be more comfortable with a per model price. They would likely be able to give you acces to all their plans online.

Good point. I’ve done one basement in 15 years in the Houston market. Perhaps “conditioned space”. Big garages typically come with big houses, so that’s not likely to present any surprises from a production builder.

Basements aren’t always ‘conditioned space’ unless ‘finished’. I use ‘Total’ sq/ft when determining my fee’s, (not just “above grade” as some agents like to try and get away with).

Anyway, to help Terry out, we really need to know more about a typical home in his service area.

What most builders want is someone to do it cheap. They promise you all these houses if you will give them a deal. What I have done is tell them you give me 10 houses at my normal rate then we can talk about a discount. Has not happened yet but have got a lot of work for the buyers. The other way to do this is to put it in groups. So many square feet to so many square feet is this much and so on. Then the builder will know where they stand.

I think Michael makes a good point here. The builder would like to be able to know exactly what it’s going to cost to have 50 units inspected.