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How to compare three contractor quotations honestly
You have three quotations. One is noticeably cheaper. The natural thing is to take it, and it is often the most expensive decision in the whole project.
Not because the cheap contractor is dishonest — usually he has simply quoted for less work, and neither of you has noticed yet.
First: are they quoting for the same thing?
Three quotations are only comparable if all three are pricing the same house. Usually they are not. Before comparing totals, check whether each one includes:
- The compound wall and gate
- Earth filling, levelling and the approach
- Water and electricity connections
- Overhead tank, pump and full plumbing fittings
- Painting — interior and exterior, how many coats
- Grade of steel and brand of cement
- Rate allowed per square foot for tiles and flooring
- Number of electrical points per room
- Doors and windows — material and finish
- Machinery, transport and site clearance
Send that list to all three and ask each to confirm in writing what is in and what is out. The gap between the quotations usually closes considerably. Sometimes it reverses.
The tile allowance trick
Watch this item specifically. A quotation may include flooring "at ₹40 per sq ft". The family later chooses tiles at ₹85. The difference across a whole house is substantial and entirely legitimate for the contractor to charge — but nobody discussed it at the start.
The same applies to sanitary fittings, doors, and electrical fittings. Ask what rate has been assumed for each, then go and look at what that rate actually buys in the market. If it buys something you would not accept in your own house, the quotation is not real.
What an itemised estimate should look like
A real estimate has rows: item, quantity, unit, rate, amount. Excavation in cubic metres. Concrete in cubic metres. Brickwork in cubic metres. Plaster in square metres. Steel in kilograms.
This matters for a practical reason beyond comparison: when you later want to change something, there is an agreed rate to change it at. Without line items, every change is a fresh negotiation from zero, and you always negotiate from the weaker position because the work has already started.
Four questions worth asking each contractor
- How will payment be staged? Payment tied to completed stages — foundation, plinth, slab, brickwork, plaster, finishing — protects both sides. Large payments in advance protect only one.
- How will extra work be handled? The right answer is: written and agreed before the work starts. Anyone who waves this away is telling you how the end of your project will go.
- What record will I get of labour and material? A contractor who keeps daily records will say so readily. It also tells you whether he knows his own costs.
- Can I see a house you finished two years ago? Not a new one — an old one. Two-year-old plaster, tiles and paint tell you far more than fresh work does, and the owner will speak frankly.
A contractor who takes a week to prepare a detailed estimate is usually cheaper by the end than one who quotes a round figure the same evening.
If the lowest quotation is far lower
Treat a very low quotation as a question, not a bargain. Either something has been left out, or the quality assumed is lower than you expect, or the contractor has underpriced and will discover it around slab stage — which is the worst outcome of the three, because a contractor losing money on your site starts economising where you cannot see: thinner steel, less cement in the mix, less curing.
The cost of that shows up in ten years, in cracks, and it cannot be repaired cheaply.