Estimating Home
Additions
Definition of an estimate:
"A good guess rounded out to two decimal
places"
Several years ago I was in a waiting room &
picked up a copy of Money Magazine. Inside the issue was a
very
interesting article.
It was around tax
return time & the
magazine editors had sent a semi-complicated tax
return information with a fake name to 50 different
tax
accountants spread around the country.
They asked each one to prepare their
return for them &
send them the bill. The list included national firms,
medium
size firms down to as small as the local CPA working out of
his
house.
The results were astounding. They
received back 50
tax returns with 50 different answers. Not one
return
had given the same tax payment due, even though
each had worked with the identical
information.
Not
only that, they received 50 different invoices for
preparing the return. The cost varied from over
$1000
to less than $100.
I can only assume that the federal government would
have accepted each return & the check that went
with
it.
The
lesson was that there is no right answer to the
question: How much do I owe in taxes?
Now since this is a website about home remodeling
you may be wondering about where I am going with
this.
I would like to bet that if you were to call in 50
different
contractors for a quote on a semi-complicated
remodel
that you would receive 50 different answers. You
would be left wondering "Which one is the right
price?"
The answer is: There is no right
price!
You
are left with the problem of trying to decide which
of the 50 is going to give you the most value for your
money.
A
difficult task indeed.
If
you use the method I advocate you will come as close
as possible to the best decision you can make.
I could write a whole book about estimating a
remodel.
Come to think of it, I wrote a book about
estimating. Several of
them.
If you are going to use a contractor. I
can show you how to get started Here
If
you want to do some of the work yourself & contract out the
rest then I can show you how Here
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