Real Estate Agent · Fairbanks, AK · Member since 2017 · 31 posts · 14 votes
Hey this is a super local question for folks in Fairbanks, Alaska and surrounding areas. I'm looking to make a personalized rehab table for this area. Just wondering if there is anybody who has done much of the leg work that would be willing to share or any professionals in the rehab space that would like to share prices and how they estimate jobs.
I've read through the book on estimating rehab cost by J Scott. I'm very much able to reach out to professionals in their field to get these questions answered, but if you would like to throw out any tips on that process I'm always happy to learn. Just trying to avoid reinventing the wheel if somebody has already done much of this.
New to Real Estate · Anchorage, AK · Member since 2019 · 9 posts · 4 votes
4y
Hey Blake, I work in town here for a commercial building GC, but we don’t do residential so I don’t have too much first hand knowledge on that, and there’s different pools of subcontractors where some do both commercial and residential, or just cater to one or the other. Construction cost here is outrageously expensive.
What we see commercially here for rates is carpenters $70 to $90/hr, electricians and plumbers around $140, flooring and painting $80-$90/hr. There’s too much that goes into estimating to try and explain in a forum post. It could be a somewhat futile effort without getting quotes and proposals directly. I would prioritize defining the scope so you can present a list of things you want done for pricing by others. Level of quality, material types, which rooms get what, what brand and model, etc. if you can get a close sketch for your floor plan, that would help immensely too. If i have a limited timeframe to estimate, I’m going to work on getting a proposal out for something where i have a floor plan and a well-defined scope of work, versus needing to spend more time trying to figure that stuff out.
Also, you can have a 100% legit estimate for something like the taping/painting work, or electrical work, etc. but the problem is sometimes you may still not find anyone interested in doing it for those prices, either because their work load is too high, the markup you assumed wasn’t very enticing, there’s no local contractor for it (ie small scale stucco , masonry), etc.
Sorry if this wasn’t particularly helpful but i really think you should emphasize defining scope so that you can easily solicit a couple different bids and those contractors are apples to apples. Otherwise they’re making their own assumptions. We don’t like making assumptions if we can avoid it. We want the owner to tell us what exactly they want, and then bid accordingly.