How Do I Compare Three Remodel Bids That Are Not Like for Like?
Normalise them before you compare them. Three bids at $180k-$260k for the same Los Angeles house usually differ by less than they appear once allowances, exclusions and contingency are levelled — and occasionally the cheapest turns out to be the most expensive. Work through it in four passes: rebuild each bid into the same categories, reprice every allowance at the same specification, add back what each one excluded, then compare. The gap between the three commonly falls from 30-40% to under 10%.
Pass one: rebuild all three into the same categories
Take a sheet and write down the same seven rows for every bid: demolition, materials, labour, allowances, permits, management, contingency.
Now move each bid's numbers into those rows. This is tedious and it is where the real work happens, because contractors group things differently — one puts demolition inside labour, another shows it separately, a third folds it into a mobilisation line.
Two things will already be visible when you finish. First, which bids left a row empty. An empty permits row or an empty contingency row is not a saving, it is a cost that has not been shown to you. Second, which bid is actually cheapest on the work itself, as opposed to cheapest on the parts that were not included.
Pass two: reprice every allowance at one specification
This is the pass that changes the answer most often.
Pick one specification for each allowance item — the tile you actually want, the cabinetry level you actually want — and apply it to all three bids. If bid A carries tile at $8-$12 per square foot and bid B carries it at $20-$30, they are not competing on price, they are describing different houses.
Do the same for cabinetry, stone, flooring, fixtures and hardware. On a kitchen these five allowances together frequently account for the entire apparent difference between two bids, and once levelled the two totals land within a few thousand dollars of each other.
Pass three: add back what each one left out
Read the exclusions section of each bid, and where one is silent, ask directly and get the answer in writing.
The usual suspects: appliances, window coverings, reinstating landscaping after trenching, painting rooms adjacent to the work, disposal, and anything discovered behind a wall.
Add a realistic figure for every excluded item to every bid that excluded it. This is the pass that most often reverses the ranking, because the cheapest headline number is frequently the one with the longest exclusions list — and every excluded item is still going to happen, still going to be paid for, and now at a price agreed with no competition.
Pass four: compare what is left, then compare what is not on the sheet
After three passes, look at the totals. A remaining gap under 10% is normal and reflects genuine differences in overhead, crew quality and how busy each firm is. A gap above 20% at this point means something is still not level, and the thing to do is find it rather than assume the cheap bid is a bargain.
Then set the arithmetic aside. Verify each licence on the CSLB register and confirm the workers compensation and liability coverage is current. Ask each contractor for two clients whose projects went wrong and how it was resolved — the reference everyone gives you is the happy one, and the informative one is the other.
Ask who is actually on site daily, and whether it is the person you have been talking to. On a project running 4-9 months, that answer matters more than the last few thousand dollars on the sheet.
The bid that should worry you
A bid materially below the other two, after all three passes, is not a discovery. It is a message.
Usually it means the scope was read differently, allowances were set at a level that cannot buy what you have described, or the intention is to recover the difference through change orders once the walls are open and you have no leverage left.
Occasionally it is genuine — a smaller firm with lower overhead, or one that badly wants the job in a quiet month. The way to tell is to ask directly why it is lower and listen to whether the answer is specific. A specific answer about overhead or scheduling is reassuring. A vague answer about efficiency is not.
Frequently asked follow-ups
How many bids should I get? +
Three is the useful number. One gives you nothing to compare. Two leaves you unable to tell which is the outlier. Beyond three you spend weeks normalising documents for diminishing insight, and you start wasting the time of contractors who can tell they are one of six, which affects how seriously they price it.
Should I tell contractors what the other bids are? +
Share the scope, not the numbers. Every contractor pricing the same written scope and the same allowance specifications is exactly what makes comparison possible. Sharing a rival total invites matching rather than honest pricing, and a number matched to win is a number that will be recovered later through change orders.
What if one bid is far more detailed than the others? +
That is usually a good sign about that contractor rather than a bad sign about their price. Detail means they have thought about your house specifically. It also makes their bid look higher, because everything is visible in it. Ask the less detailed bidders to match the format before you draw any conclusion about cost.
Is the middle bid always the safe choice? +
No. That rule is a way of avoiding the work rather than doing it. After normalising, the middle bid on the original sheet is frequently no longer in the middle. Pick on the levelled numbers plus licence, insurance, references and who will actually be running your site.
How long should a proper bid take to produce? +
For a whole-home project, 2-4 weeks after a proper walkthrough is normal, and longer where drawings are needed first. A detailed bid returned within 48 hours has almost certainly been assembled from square-footage assumptions rather than from your house, and that is precisely the kind of number that moves once work begins.
Want the same answer applied to your specific project? Onn personally reviews every inquiry.
Written by Onn Cohen-Meguri, founder and designer at Design Onn Point. Onn has spent 20+ years designing and building in Los Angeles. CSLB #1133368.
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