Help Needed To Create Estimating Spreadsheet
I am in the process of estimating a large rehab and I don’t want to purchase software to do the estimates because I feel more comfortable with my numbers than theirs. I am putting together a spreadsheet that would make it easy to estimate costs by listing categories and quantities so that the items will total themselves. I guess I should use excel for this, but I wondered if anyone has ever done this and if so do you have any suggestions to make this easier. Thank you. Are there any websites that I can get examples from?
Many contractors and some rehabbers develop their own spreadsheets. Mine has taken literally months and I update
it with new formulas as I need. What use to take several days
to estimate a custom home, I can now do in about 30 minutes or so.
Estimating a rehab can be very difficult because of so many
unknows and variables........this is where time and experience come into to play. I know of no program that can accurately estimate a rehab without that estimator having the experience in rehabbing themselves..................this is why many rehabbers end up creating their own spreadsheets (as you are attempting to do) to help them in their decision making process.
My spreadsheet consist of names of materials, their price, (even lineal & square foot price), many formulas as well as a series of questions (size of house, lineal foot of foundation, lenth and size of girders, floor heights, etc) when will then give automatically fill out other categories for me. I update my price list every month.
I have not found any websites for examples (except those that are selling their programs) other then finding ones that can help with formulas.
Let us know how it goes.
NC_Yank
Thank you both for your response. NC_Yank it sounds like what I am creating is very similar to what you have created for yourself. I was up late last night working on the spreadsheet for the interior portion of the rehab and I know that my numbers should be very close as I am just finishing a similar job and have those calculations to use. I hope that I can keep this updated and add to and modify the costs as needed. I have also been detailed enough to use this as my budget and put in actual costs so that I can keep a check if I am over or under.
Yes it did help, especially the "making it count part". Makes good sense.
What is SFR? I clicked on it but i dont have excess to it.
But thanks alot.
Anyone else have any suggestions?
SFR is an acronym for Single Family Residence
Make sure you really consider the time value of money. Think of how long it will take you to do the work, and then weight that against how long and how much it will cost to hire some of the work out. We made the mistake of trying to do everything ourselves on our first one. The work ended up taking a few months longer than anticipated and as a result cost a few thousand in mortage payments and utilities. Something to consider.
I am moving this thread to the rehab forum since it is not a building/development question.