Anyone getting quotes back for major building work at the moment?

[CityDweller]

We've just had the tenders back for our extension/ renovation and they are eyewateringly huge. Like 3-4 x our budget huge. I can't tell if it's because our architects (who we chose in part because they seemed the most budget-savvy of the ones we met and who constantly told us our project was achievable for our budget) were deluded and have been leading us on this merry fantasy for the past 18 months, designing a project we could never afford, or if it really is just because everything has gone bonkers in the construction world at the moment, with the shortage of materials and labour.

We're now back to the drawing board, and looking at having to pay our architects to re-design a project that was never anyway realistic. We've already paid them an arm and a leg and spent months and months fannying about the details of a design and it's all been a complete waste of time (and our money). I like our architects a lot, but I feel a bit miffed about where we're at now.

Is anyone else in a similar position? I guess I just wanted to moan a bit. But also I'm wondering whether we should just wait for another year (already been waiting two) to embark on this. We desperately need the additional space though and I'm not sure our decrepit old heating system will see us through another winter...

Anyone else seeing their building plans disappear down the post-Brexit, mid-Covid toilet?

Price of materials are rocketing- timber is in short supply as is/was plaster I was told.

Timber has pretty much doubled overnight. As has cement and a few other bits.

What works you wanted and your budget and area would be a good place to start, there’s bound to be people here who have a good idea of the rough costs.

Oh bum we're about to get planning on a major renovation project and about to start getting quotes. There's no way it would be worth spending 3x what we have planned. Do we think waiting a couple of years might help? Who needs showers anyway.... I wish you good luck!

Have had less ambitious building works recently and my builders were saying they are having to reprice quotes done a while ago and just increasing costs of materials in line with new prices has added a massive percentage to quotes.

3-4 x your budget can't just be because of the high price of materials at the moment. The architects have either made a mistake or don't know what they are doing. What did they say when you told them about your quotes? Can you ask one of the builders what % of the quote is higher cost of materials?

Is your architect charging their fee based on build cost?

We are mid renovation and our cost have gone up and everything is taking twice as long as it should due to labour shortages and material lead times. That sort of extra cost though is due to your architect not being realistic though.

We’ve just gone 60% over budget on a build - partly due to a couple of unforeseen circumstances but largely due to the increase in price of materials/lack of availability.

My plasterer had to pull off the job early one day because a builders merchant had a decent delivery of gyprock and he needed to get as much as he could for both mine and another job. I had no reason to disbelieve him as I’ve also paid almost twice the price for post-crete recently.

@RNBrie We've had lots of conversations with the architects since we got the quotes back and we're now re-designing parts of the project to make it more achievable. They think the quotes are excessively high, even given the increase in materials costs...

@roses2, yes their fee is a percentage of the budget. So far it's been calculated on the budget we've been working towards. They know our max and that we can't go over this.

Sorry to hear others are having issues too. It's a bloody pain...

We’re mid-renovation, and our (excellent) contractor is having to requote for some elements because of spiralling costs of basic building materials. As well as basics like plywood and cement, he’s worried about copper piping — we’re replumbing the whole house.

Our architects are paid a fixed fee. Why should they get paid more if I wanted gold taps or diamante door knobs? Couldn't see the point, so chose one with a fixed rate.

We are re-doing an entire, derelict home from top to bottom. Everyone has said its the materials which are going up weekly. There are limits on bags of cement for non-trade customers and wood has gone up since we bought the 1st lot 2mths ago. We were advised to buy anything we can NOW and store it till needed. Otherwise, it could double in the next month or 2!!!

We pay 40% more for our timber than last year and our lead time is 50% longer too, the price of steel also has rocketed. Labour is also an issue. Unfortunately this is probably the worst time in recent years to be looking at undertaking such a project, I'd definitely be holding off a year if not two if at all possible.

That’s good advice. We should have been done by august. I’ll be surprised if we’re done by Christmas. I’ll also be surprised if I’m not divorced through the stress of it all

We can't even get quotes from most builders they booked through til pretty much November. The one we did get was around 50% more than the quote we had last year for the same job. Pretty much due to increased costs the man told me when I asked why prices were so different

I'm a tradesperson. I'm a one woman band, so don't quote on the scale you're talking about, but even on my small scale things are nuts at the moment. My material costs have risen 50% since the start of the year, on top of the 10-20% rise in the last half of 2020. A lot of the materials I either can't get at all, or have to travel out of area to source. I'm also really busy for bookings. Typically I'd have 6-8 weeks of work booked in, but currently have 15 weeks and at one point last year it was 6 months (which stresses me out - too much pressure/responsibility. One period of DCs isolating completely screws me over!).

Skanking that ties in with a conversation I had with our electrician as to supplies - at the moment he is pretty much hoping whatever he needs Amazon has, as locally parts are so scarce

We are about to do our kitchen. Tradespeople are telling me they've been working flat out for the last year, never known anything like it.

Yup, I think we may just by default end up putting it off for a while longer. It's so annoying - we've been dicking around with the designs, planning permission and whatnot for ages. We started working with the architects 18 months ago. I just feel like it's never going to happen. And I genuinely think our heating system (and many of our window and door frames, which are rotting, plus god knows what else that's on its last legs) will make it through another winter. Ugh. The whole thing sucks. Fucking Brexit. Fucking Covid.

That should say don't think

I would delay if you can. It’s a really stressful and expensive time to build

Re people saying delay: will materials prices actually go down at a later point, or will it be a permanent rise?

I work in construction, albeit on big infrastructure projects. It is part (Covid) and labour (Brexit) that is driving this, and pay a huge demand from domestic residential customers.

We built ours 4 years ago..at the same time 2 friends were also building large extensions. All quotes we all received at at least 30% over what the architect said. In reality we concluded it was a mixture of architects not wanting to put people off and therefore not commissioning them and their estimates being basically on bare minimum, ie minimum electrics whereby we wanted plenty of sockets for eg.

Having said that ....there is no way we could build our extension now for anywhere near the the cost then so I'm just thankful

I would wait...market forces will play out and it is all skewed due to Covid and lockdowns having meant builders couldn't work along with huge materials shortages.

What prob won't change is all the Eastern European tradesmen that have returned to their home country.

We are currently in the process of buying a fixer upper and all these stories are terrifying me…… it’s mostly just modernisation (rewire, plaster, decorating, new kitchen/bathroom) but the roof needs something doing to it as per the survey (getting quotes at the moment) and I just keep thinking our budgets going to blow out massively, even with doing the simple stuff ourselves. I don’t know what to do. I know we were nieve but I honestly didn’t know there were all these problems with supply and labour etc when we offered. They had several offers much lower than ours before we offered asking price - which at the time I thought reflected the work that needed doing fairly well. I now don’t know whether to lower our offer or pull out…… but there’s literally nothing else on the market 😩

Yes crazy times, we have recently pulled out of an investment purchase, that required renovation, as a direct result of shortages and price hikes in materials. The survey showed lots of issues, inc. live woodworm. We walked away, I think the final straw for us was a builder wanting to charge £185+VAT just to provide a quote! Madness.