DON’T TAKE A WILD GUESS AT THE COST OF YOUR ROOFING PROJECT
Far too many times, we have seen building owners take a wild, uneducated guess at the cost of their upcoming roofing project. All this does is lead to over-spending on the project or a delay in the project as they don’t have the funds to complete it. Underestimating the amount you’ll spend on a roofing project is a sad and costly roofing pitfall to avoid. Here are some tips to help you make sure you estimate the correct amount to spend on your repair or installation project.
Consult a Professional
This is the most obvious choice: If you don’t know much about roofing or how to determine the price of a project, don’t try to determine the price yourself. Contact a roof consultant or a roofing contractor and get an estimate for the project. This will help you ensure that you have a good estimate of the price for your project, while also ensuring that you know approximately how long it will take.
Build in Some Contingencies
Even if you consult with a roof contractor or a consultant, they may still miss the final price of the project. Sometimes they will overestimate, sometimes they will underestimate. The bottom line is that they can still be wrong, even though they are a safer bet than you estimating yourself.
So, how can you prevent being burned by a professional missing the final price of a project? Build in some contingencies. If you’re capable of spending $300k on a project and the predicted spend comes in from the professional at $295k, maybe you should look at cutting the project back a little bit to build $20-25k of contingency money in. This way, if they underestimated and the project is more expensive, you’ve got the cash available.
Conclusion
No one is perfect and anyone can make an inaccurate estimate on a roofing project. However, if you’re going to undertake a roofing project, it’s a good idea to let a professional work out an estimate for you. Once you get the estimate, make sure you’ve got breathing room between the estimate amount and your budgeted cash to spend, just in case anything goes wrong or the estimate was too small.
