Unless you are Dermot Bannon, doing up your house must be one of the most expensive and nerve-racking jobs you can ever take on.
In this episode of Better with Money, quantity surveyor Shay Lally (also known as @houses_to_restore on Instagram) gives a crash course in how to plan and cost the renovation of an average three-bed, semidetached home in Ireland.
He has tips for seeking out builders and tradespeople and explains why – tempting as it may be – you shouldn’t automatically opt for the cheapest offer.
“Often people often go for the cheapest quotation,” Lally says. “And then there’s 20 per cent of what the other fella left out, and in actual fact, the cheapest quotation ends up becoming the most expensive quotation.”
READ MORE
But how does a lay person know what has been left out? There’s a huge amount of assumed knowledge when it comes to building works. How would you even be able to tell if there had been omissions on contracts?
That’s where a quantity surveyor (QS) comes in. Naturally enough, Lally would advocate for hiring one early in the project. But his rationale is compelling.
Among the alarms that can be sounded by a QS is something called “front-loading”. That is to say, when the highest rates are charged at the beginning of a project while the jobs with a lower profit margin come at the end.
“So what that means is, is that there’s more money in the project for the contractor at the start. If they get a better offer, if there’s some issue along the way, they’ve kinda made their money on the job, they might disappear. You might find it difficult to get them back to finish the project. So having a QS on your side will actually look at that from various different perspectives and see, okay, is this kind of priced across the board?”
Lally also outlines common budget risks, the need for a clear brief and why it’s worth prioritising elements like insulation, heating and rewiring over finishes that could easily be added at a later date.
He also runs through the SEAI and Vacant/Derelict Homes grants, staged bank drawdowns, contracts, red flags with tradespeople, and renovation choices that can add or reduce a home’s resale value.
You can listen to on the player above, or search for Better with Money wherever you get your podcasts.
