Three bids, three different projects
The advice to get three bids is the most repeated line in home improvement, and on its own it is nearly useless. Here is what actually happens: you call three contractors, walk each of them around the house, and describe the job three slightly different ways. One hears "fix the leak." One hears "replace the roof." One notices the soffit while he is up there and prices that too. Three numbers come back — $4,000, $11,000, $14,500 — and you sit at the kitchen table trying to work out who is ripping you off.
Nobody is ripping you off. They priced three different projects. The spread you are staring at is your own scope drifting between phone calls, and no amount of squinting at the numbers will tell you that, because the thing that differs is not on the page.
The fix is unglamorous and it takes about twenty minutes: decide what the job is before you call anyone, write it down, and hand the identical document to all three. Every contractor then prices the same work, and the spread that comes back is real information — about labour rates, about scheduling, about how badly someone wants the job in February.
Same scope means same decisions, not same words
A scope is not a description of the problem. It is a list of the decisions you have already made, so the contractor does not have to guess and quietly bake his guess into the price. "Replace the roof" is a problem. "Tear off to the deck, replace any rotten sheathing, ice-and-water shield in the valleys and along the eaves, architectural asphalt, ridge vent" is a scope.
You do not need to know the right answer to every one of those. You need to have made the same choice for all three bidders. If you genuinely do not know whether you want asphalt or metal, then ask all three to price both — but ask all three. The moment one contractor is pricing metal and two are pricing asphalt, the comparison is dead and you will not notice, because all three pieces of paper say "roof."
The other half is the exclusions. Say out loud what is not in the job: no gutters, no interior repair, no chimney work. Contractors who assume differently are not being dishonest — they are filling a silence, and the one who fills it most generously looks the most expensive for no reason at all.
The number you want is not the lowest bid. It is the bid you understand line by line, from a crew you can reach in eighteen months when something needs looking at.
What to write down before you call
Keep it to a page. Email it to each contractor before the walkthrough so they arrive with it in hand, and take a printed copy to the visit. Six lines is usually enough:
- The work, in one sentence, with the boundary stated — what is in, what is out.
- The materials you have chosen, by type and grade. If you have not chosen, name the two options and ask every bidder to price both.
- What happens to what comes off: tear-off, haul-away, dumpster on the driveway or not.
- The unknowns, priced as unit rates rather than guesses — rotten sheathing by the sheet, buried plumbing by the hour. This is the single line that prevents most change-order arguments.
- Your timing, honestly. "Before the first freeze" and "whenever you can fit it in" are different jobs and they price differently.
- Who is home, where they can park, and whether there is a dog. Small, but it is the difference between a crew that starts at seven and a crew that starts at nine.
Now the three numbers mean something
With one scope out and three bids back, the spread is finally worth reading. A bid that lands well under the other two is usually missing a line — find it before you decide it is a bargain, because it will reappear later as a change order, and change orders are priced by someone who already has your roof off.
A bid well over the other two is not automatically padding. Look for what it includes that the others skipped: a longer workmanship warranty, permit fees carried, a full crew instead of two people and a nephew. Sometimes the expensive bid is the only complete one.
And two bids landing within a few hundred dollars of each other is the most useful signal in the whole exercise. That is the market telling you what the job costs. Now you get to choose on the things that actually differ — who returned your call, who put it in writing, who you would rather have on your roof.