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Updated over 7 years ago,

User Stats

107
Posts
33
Votes
Brendon K.
  • Real Estate Agent
  • Los Angeles
33
Votes |
107
Posts

When did you become comfortable with pricing repairs?

Brendon K.
  • Real Estate Agent
  • Los Angeles
Posted

Same ol story, I'm not a construction guy and have no education on pricing out repairs. I'm pretty confident that the podcast and the calculators don't go over specific repair estimates because prices vary so wildly between different regions. For example, the stuff I can buy here in Austin would be 3x the price of the stuff I can buy in Michigan where I'm from, but labor prices would be even more different because of the high amount of immigrants here (versus the terrible government in Mi, who knows what would be better).

I've found a number of books on the subject. Dewalt has a book that gets fairly in-depth for estimating materials needed. Of course we have Jay Scott's books, which are also pretty good. But what they can't really put into the equation is both the cost of labor and of the profit margin for the construction companies themselves, cause you know they mark up prices substantially.

I'm left wondering how the heck I'm going to figure this stuff out! What was YOUR turning point for getting accurate ballpark figures without actually purchasing the house? I don't want to trust any realtor as I've only found one good one in our area so far and I'd like to be able to be more cynical about any estimates that come my way.

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