How many quotes did you get do your home renovation?

[Taybz]

Just as above really. We're trying to get a few builders to come to a the property we've offered on to give us quotes for a full home renovation. We don't have keys to the property yet as we're in the early stage so arranging access with the agent is a bit of a challenge. How many quotes did you get before settling on a builder? Would it be too cheeky to get 2 builders in at the same time?

Also, is it unreasonable to request several viewings with the estate agent in order to do these things and have more time in the property. Our agent is always super busy and I fear everything will take much longer to organise.

My feeling is you have to wait as a lot of water yet to flow under the bridge before you can book a builder. I would have thought they would also be very reluctant to engage at any meaningful level until you own the property. Unless you have a particular pet one.

I'm surprised you can get any at all at this stage as you haven't even exchanged. Also what about the sellers? do they not mind having you want to look at the property all the time?
Do not get 2 builders to come at the same time - you can stagger them, but not together.

It’s hard enough to get quotes when you own a house let alone on one you have only offered on. It costs builders/tradespeople a lot of time and money providing quotes, on a full house renovation that is a lot of work for possibly nothing in it for them at all.

A few builders have told us they'll only do quotes when we have PP approved. I think we'll end up with 5/6 quotes though. There's a new company we may use who give a detailed approximation of what the cost should be. To be compared with more causal quotes from builders.

We didn’t have any builders visit until we had narrowed it down to two. All our original quotes came from the builders working off the detailed building control plans, they didn’t need to see the house. We just called 6 building companies, emailed our plans and waited for the quotes to come back (or not, in our case, as some were too busy to even consider our job).

How many quotes do you want to get? Then double it. For our extension, we approached eight builders, six replied and we ended up with quotes from five, which I was pleasantly surprised by - I’d been aiming for three or four.

I personally think it would be cheeky to get people round at the same time, and I’d wait until you’ve exchanged unless it’s a builder you know and their say-so affects whether you proceed with the sale.

I also think you can only have so many viewings unless the property is empty. A post-offer viewing isn’t unusual, and a post-exchange visit to measure up, for example, would also be OK. More than that might be pushing it when you consider the survey and so on.

We got quotes once we were in and had planning. The architect put it out to tender. We had (just pre Covid) a builder who had worked with us before come round to give a ballpark figure. But he wouldn't have put the time into a full quote etc till we owned it.

Again, pre Covid - the estate agent was happy to let us look around as many times as we liked after our offer had been accepted - the house was empty so he sent various people round with the keys like the office junior who just waited for us to finish with the builder, architect etc.