Pricing depends on what materials you choose to buy. For example if you’re installing tile in your home, tile can range anywhere from $2 a square foot up to $100 a square foot. So if your bathroom is 200 ft.². Then you think: well I’m gonna spend between $400 and $2000 for a contractor to tile my bathroom…but that’s not true!!! The realistic answer, is if you choose to hire a contractor who goes and buys the materials needed for the job, that contractor is going to mark up those materials that he’s going to sell to you for the job. That markup can be anywhere from 10% up to 200%. That markup depends on the contractor and company policies. But any business, or should I say any successful business, is going to mark up the materials they buy and sell to the customer for install. That’s how businesses operate!
So take that example above, you have a 200 square-foot bathroom, and you’ve hired someone to install tile. But remember, the contractor has to mark up the cost of materials in order to be a profitable business. So if you see a price at your local big box store and think to yourself, “that material only costs that much, and my contractors charging me this much”, think again, because he has to mark up the cost of the material. And that goes for the other material that go into installing tile. So it’s not just the cost of tile. You may need sealer’s, caulking, grout, thin set, mortar, etc.… And each material needs to be marked up. And then the cost of labor also needs to be factored into the proposal by the contractor. Also the contractor has to factor in his cost of doing business, and how much money he needs to make on your job, for it to make sense for him to bid on it.
Materials are not cheap these days. For example the price of a 2 x 4 went up $1.50 each, when the COVID 19 pandemic started. It’s because of supply and demand. That’s how a capitalist country operates. You capitalize on the demand compared to the supply. A 2 x 4 used to cost around $3 per board. Now the cost for a 2×4 in some places is almost $5 per board. That’s why the price to hire someone has seemed to go up in the last few years. Because the cost of materials keeps going up. Compound that by the last 20 years and many people are shocked by prices. But it helps to remember that everything is more expensive now, not just construction – groceries, housing, fuel, and wages.
I wanted to write this to give people a realistic view of what to expect when they hire a contractor, and help you feel less shock at current contraction prices. If you have an idea of how much something is going to cost when you hire a contractor, double or triple that number and you’re probably closer to how much it’s really going to cost you, the client.
…And the answer to your question that you’re probably thinking…“I’m sure somebody can do this job for less”, is yes! It’s good to shop around, and get multiple bids from other contractors. You want to find the contractor and price that fits your situation, your budget, and one that you can get along with! If the price is just too good to be true? Look before you leap and ask yourself: “why is it so cheap compared to the other quotes I’ve gotten?” See my article on choosing a good contractor to learn more about this….
