Why two bids for the same job come back so far apart

A bid is a list of assumptions with a number on the end

Two competent, honest contractors can walk the same basement, the same kitchen, the same roof, and hand you numbers that are nowhere near each other. That is not usually a sign that one of them is wrong. It is a sign that they wrote down different projects.

Everything that ends up in a total — labor, materials, subcontractors, schedule, risk — sits downstream of a set of assumptions the bidder made while standing in your house. Most of those assumptions never make it onto the page. When you compare totals without comparing assumptions, you are comparing two answers to two different questions.

The six places bids actually diverge

1. Scope gaps. The largest differences are usually things one bid includes and another simply does not: moving a vent stack, upgrading the circuit feeding a new bathroom, re-supporting a wall that turned out to be bearing, hauling the debris away. None of it is optional once work starts. It is only optional on paper.

2. Allowances versus selections. Tile, fixtures, cabinets, flooring, and lighting are often carried as allowance numbers before you have chosen anything. An allowance is a placeholder, not a price, and the bid with the thinnest placeholders looks best and finishes worst. Where you can make the selection, make it, and have it priced as the real item.

3. Spec level under the finished surface. Two bathrooms can look identical the day they are done and differ everywhere you cannot see: waterproofing method behind the tile, underlayment under the roof, insulation values, framing lumber, the fixtures roughed into the wall. The cheaper assembly is not always the wrong choice — but you should know you are choosing it.

4. Who carries the site costs. Permits and plan review, structural engineering, dumpsters, sanitation, floor and furniture protection, dust control, temporary heat for winter work, daily cleanup, final clean. Some bids carry all of it, some carry none of it, and the homeowner rarely finds out which until the first invoice that says “extra.”

5. How unknowns get priced. Every project older than a few years has some. Knob-and-tube wiring behind lath, undersized framing, a prior remodel that skipped a permit, water damage under a shower pan. A bid that quietly assumes nothing will be wrong is not a cheaper bid. It is the same bid, found later, at a worse moment.

6. Labor structure and schedule. Whether the crew is in-house or subcontracted, how many jobs are running at once, when your project can actually start, and whether the work is sequenced for the season it lands in all move the number legitimately. A contractor who can start in three weeks and one who can start in three months are not selling the same thing.

The Utah part: your contract decides whether a lien can reach you

This is the piece homeowners rarely weigh when a low, informal number shows up. Utah’s Residence Lien Restriction and Lien Recovery Fund Act shields the owner of a single-family or duplex residence from subcontractor liens — but only when three conditions are met: you contracted in writing with a licensed contractor (or one exempt from licensure), you paid the contract price in full, including any amendments, and the residence is occupied by you or a tenant within 180 days of completion. The Division of Professional Licensing issues a Certificate of Compliance as the homeowner’s proof.

Read that as a pricing fact, because it is one. A bid that comes in under the others by skipping the license and the written contract is also skipping the thing that stops you from paying a subcontractor for work you already paid the contractor for. Verifying is free and takes about two minutes at the state’s license lookup — we are B100 General Building Contractor #11678454-5501, and the same check works on anyone.

How to force an apples-to-apples comparison

• Write the scope once, hand it to everyone. Even a single page of plain sentences — what you want done, what you want kept, what you have already picked — turns three guesses into three answers.
• Ask what is excluded. This is the highest-yield question in the whole process, and it is more informative than the total. Ask for it in writing.
• Convert allowances into selections wherever a decision can be made now, and ask what each remaining allowance actually buys.
• Ask how changes get handled. Written change orders, priced and signed before the work happens, are what keep a project from drifting.
• Ask who is on site. Which parts are in-house, which are subcontracted, and who is responsible when a trade misses a day.
• Compare timelines and start dates as part of the price, not as trivia attached to it.

What the cheapest number usually turns out to mean

Sometimes it means a contractor with a lighter overhead structure or a crew already working next door. Often it means a smaller scope, a thinner allowance, an unknown left unpriced, or a site cost that lands on you later. The way to tell the difference is not intuition — it is the exclusion list.

We write free estimates the same way every time: scope, price, and timeline on paper before anything starts, with the work that is not included stated plainly rather than left for you to discover. Compare that document against anyone else’s. That is what it is for.