How to compare contractor bids.

Three bids for the same home can land hundreds of thousands of dollars apart, and the number at the bottom of the page tells you almost nothing about what the finished house will cost. A low bid is usually a narrow bid: it carries fewer inclusions, softer allowances, and more of the work pushed into a change order that arrives after demolition starts.

The honest comparison is not price against price. It is scope against scope, and it takes a line-by-line read of each proposal: what is included, what is excluded, which materials are named, and which are left as allowances to be decided later with your money.

Start with one document: the scope you want built, written plainly, with finishes named and quantities stated. Send the identical document to every bidder. When each proposal comes back, map it against that scope line by line and record where a builder went quiet. Silence in a bid is not a saving; it is a decision someone will make later without you in the room.

Architects draw, engineers size, builders build, and each one is accountable for their own slice. Between those slices live the gaps: the door schedule nobody owned, the lighting layout that arrived after rough-in, the allowance that ran out in month four. Somebody has to hold the entire project, answer to you alone, and be present from the first bid review through the last punch list item.

That is the difference between hiring a builder and hiring someone whose only job is your interest. Before you sign anything, decide which one you are getting, and get it in writing.