· 6 min read
You get three quotes for the same roof and they come back $4,000 apart. That does not mean two of them are dishonest. It usually means they are quoting three different jobs, and the quotes are written in a way that makes it almost impossible to tell. Here is how to work out which is which.
What a quote has to specify
A price on its own is not a quote. It is a number you cannot check. What makes a quote useful is that it names the work precisely enough that two of them can be compared, and precisely enough that you would notice if something got skipped.
On a tile roof restoration, that means it says whether the ridge capping is being re-pointed or re-bedded and re-pointed, because those are different jobs at different prices. It says how many tiles are included and what happens if more are broken. It names the coating system and how many coats. It says whether the gutters are being cleared of what comes off the roof during the clean.
On a metal roof it means the profile and the steel grade, not just the word Colorbond, and what the fasteners and flashings are made of. On a replacement it means what happens if the battens turn out to be rotten once the roof is off, because nobody can see them until then.
A price on its own is not a quote. It is a number you cannot check.
Why the prices differ so much
Four things account for most of the spread, and only one of them is profit margin.
The first is scope. A re-point over failed bedding costs a fraction of a full re-bed, and on a quote that just says re-pointing you cannot tell which you are getting. The cheap quote is often cheaper because it is doing less, and the less it does is the part that determines whether the job lasts.
The second is access. A steep two-storey roof with no room for equipment costs more to get onto than to work on. A quote that has not been on site has not priced that.
The third is materials, and this is where metal roofing quotes separate. Unbranded steel and Colorbond are not the same product, and standard grade and coastal grade are not the same product either. On a roof within sight of the surf that difference is not cosmetic.
The fourth is what the quote does about the unknown. An honest replacement quote carries a stated allowance for frame repairs. A quote with no allowance is not cheaper, it just has not told you about that cost yet.
Four questions that sort it out
You do not need to know roofing to compare quotes. You need four questions, and the answers will separate them faster than the prices do.
- Is the ridge capping being re-bedded, or only re-pointed? If the answer is re-pointing, ask what condition the bedding underneath is in. Pointing over a failed bed cracks again within a couple of summers.
- What grade of steel have you allowed, and how far from breaking surf do you think this house is? Anyone quoting metal roofing near the coast should be able to answer both parts.
- What happens if you find something once the roof is open? You want a number, or at least a method. Silence here is the most expensive answer.
- Did you get on the roof and into the roof space? A quote written from the driveway is a guess about the one thing that decides whether you should restore or replace at all.
You do not need to know roofing to compare quotes. You need four questions.
When the cheapest quote is the right one
Sometimes it genuinely is. A smaller operator with lower overheads doing exactly the same scope on the same materials will come in under a larger one, and there is nothing wrong with that.
The way to tell is that the cheap quote survives the four questions. If it specifies the same scope, the same grade, the same number of coats and the same allowance, and it is still cheaper, that is a better price for the same job. If it goes vague at any of those points, the gap is the answer.