My very expensive GC quote for bathroom was 16% GC profit. He didn't charge admin and supervision. That's already factored in with his local supervisor who is working on the job every day.

I think mine is expensive because line items like a 33"Wx12"H floating vanity is $3000 without countertop. His tile work is being charged at $35/SF for tiling only.

Mike Shaw:

Do you ask or know how much profit your car dealer or barber are making? If so, would that cause you to change dealers or barbers? If the answer is "No", then fugetaboudit.

If he's charging you this, apparently you've already signed a deal. You had your chance to evaluate whether or not he was worth his charges before you inked the paper. A deal's a deal. Man up and move on.

What is the overall scope of work for the project and overall budget? Supervision and design overhead take a bigger % out of smaller budget projects than larger ones. A 200K kitchen redo might only have 30K of contractor fees where a 50K project might have 12K in fees. That is separate from the actual labor dollars of course.

People need to learn that PROFIT is what is left over after the insurance payment, licensing fees, and other costs of doing business. It's not 16% of any job. And we live somewhere that profit is actually encouraged! Unless of course, it is a contractor earning the money. 3K is a perfectly reasonable charge for a custom floating vanity. I've done ''regular'' vanities that cost that much, much less floating ones.

I don't have a problem with profit. I didn't disagree with the GC's percentage. I had an issue with the vanity which only cost $500 fully finished in Walnut to my specs via a custom cabinet maker vs an unfinished particle board box that is 12" high quoted by the GC at $3000. According to the GC, adding in stone top and finish would bring that vanity to near $5K.

In fact, I'm looking at gorgeous antique tables for a fraction of that $5000 because I need something that has an apron the height of a piece of paper.

I can buy a 1908 mahogany table from Christies for $1600 or splurge and spend $3200 for a magnificent 1740 pristine condition regency French table with bronze carving and marble top. I just can't bring myself to desecrate that table by cutting into it. I'm still debating.

For me, a 12" high raw particle board box does not have the same value as a 265 years old antique from one of the world's most prestigious auction house.

If people are willing to pay those prices for wooden boxes, it's their choice. I just like to feel that I'm getting a fair value.

Sounds like a lot to me although to be fair I am not very experienced with this - for my kitchen reno (in a very expensive metro area - my jaw drops at how cheaply some people are able to get things done in other locations!) I got two full quotes - one charged 10% overhead and profit, the other charged 15%. There were no line item hours for contractor time, although agree that some of this is probably factored in to the head subs pay. Profit amount was reduced significantly from the initial quote since I went with my own subs for cabs/countertop and bought nearly all of my own fixtures/appliances - no fuss from him except a bit for the delays (my people were WAY slower than his - I was sad too).

Why didn't you GC the job yourself and pocket the 19.5% plus immediately choose whatever deal or product suited you when it came up ???

Do you shop pricing on indiv. components of your other big ticket items ?

Bet you could find a cheaper supplier for your car window glass or tires than the manufacturer. Did you ask your barber or hairdresser to use ching chong chang scissors instead of those finely crafted pair of handmade Japanese ones so they could reduce their overhead and charge you less ?

I know I can source a better and cheaper camera and microphone for my iPhone than Apple does, but then I'd have no idea what the heck to do with them.

Really? What difference does it make to you what his profit is if you like what he does? Isn't that what it comes down to? I'm quite certain I can get it all cheaper than what I pay my GC , but not necessarily better or without headache. My GC is expensive, but I get service and quality and creativity and I NEVER have to worry about anything. Deserves whatever profit he makes and in my opinion..... priceless.

Do you ( anyone) feel you get better value for your $$$ from your contractor for his administrative charges or from your kid's college for theirs ?

Is there a ballpark % that the GC should receive relative to the entire price of the project? As someone else mentioned I believe the poster meant to write % charge over cost their GC is charging. After they deduct their costs they can calculate their profits. For example they may charge you 20% above cost or $20,000. If the GC's total costs is $10,000, then the profit margin would be 10%. 100k/10k=10%

No.

is there a % ballpark your church should receive?

your kids schoolteacher ?

your doctor?

what about local homeless shelter ?

should the guy who paves the street you use everyday get a tip from you?

what about the CEO of the bank you use? - trust me, you don't want to know his percentage.

Folks , there is no one rule of thumb for this stuff.

Joseph - To be fair I didn't talk to any GC that didn't let you use choose your own cabinets (many of which provide install services) or countertops (ditto for me since I wanted dekton which wasn't available from my GC's countertop guy). I understand why you wouldn't, but it's really nice to have the flexibility to choose what you want at a price point that works for you. And it's not like it was a surprise - everyone was clear up front about who was doing what.

Sherri - It's all a balance of cost vs function - I definitely care what the profit/overhead is - it's added on cost to EVERYTHING else that is done. The difference between 10% and 20% + hourly charges is huge, and could break your budget. I actually chose to go with the GC that charged a higher percentage, but it definitely factored into the decision. If you have unlimited budget I suppose it doesn't matter....but that's just not most people's situation.

jaybar - yes that's what I meant too - both folks I talked to charged a fixed percentage of total project cost for overhead/profit. No idea what is standard practice, which is why I thought this was interesting! It totally made sense for me to charge this for much of the work, but not so much for other things like expensive custom cabs for instance.

@Jaybar, from my 3 powder room estimates - the GC's percentage was of the entire project. They ranged from $40K to $67K plus TDB charges which aren't broken out or estimated yet. So I would pay the GC at least $6.6K (16.5%) for the $40K estimate and the $67K estimated wanted 20% ($13.4K).

The kitchen estimates were 10% and 15%. I only got 2 quotes.

You definitely want to look at line items. In my $40K powder room quote, some of the labor were obviously high. Demo was high but livable; plumbing was $1800 for the shower drain; and tiling for 96SF was $3,360 @$35/SF (this was high to me but I can swallow it if I really want the GC - my kitchen tiling was $8.75/SF and that was at top of market). He probably wanted more because it's a tiny powder room.

What stopped me cold was the vanity in both estimates. I'm pushing the project off while I reassess the vanity choice.

Bottomline, GCs will charge whatever they feel is appropriate for their business. Your job is to look at the details and total cost and decide what works for you.

As an example, I paid $15K to repipe my house. The neighbor next door paid $5800 and the neighbor on next street paid $25K. Our houses are identical in size. We were all happy with our contractors.

I wouldn't have traded my contractor for the lower cost that my next door neighbor paid even after the fact. I recommended my contractor to my neighbor and he didn't want to pay that price. He shopped until he got the price he wanted.

• My neighbor who paid $25K used her plumber and it was a single man job.
• For my $15K, my contractor had 8 people show up for the repiping, Xray specialist, 3 guys just for concrete and a 10 man crew who only did drywall. There were 3 days of construction.
• The $5800 job had 3 guys and spent 2 weeks. I saw the work and would have had reservation about the material they used inside the concrete slab.

I don't know about a lot of the pricing discussed above. What I have learned (although what are the chances of needing the knowledge again?) is to set rules and timelines with monetary penalty for both parties if not satisfied. And, to cut bait at the first sign of failure to meet a deadline.

I'm in Portland, Oregon. Our GC was phenomenal! He did our whole house renovation studs to drywall, finishing up February 2015. I believe his part is 30% of the overall renovation cost which was a bit less than $100 per square foot on our 1200 sf, 3/2 (I can't remember the exact final cost; $105-110,000-ish.)

It's just him and his subs. He only manages one project at a time, so he works efficiently and your project is completed asap. I could go on and on about our great experience. We'll be hiring him in a couple years when we add an ADU to our daylight basement. Can't wait.

If you're getting excellent service and quality construction in quick time, I think 30% is totally worth it. We are very frugal people and an expense of this magnitude is somewhat out of character for us, but it was truly one of the best experiences I've ever had.

"with monetary penalty for both parties if not satisfied."

I'll never sign a residential contract with a penalty clause. When you're a quarter-billion dollar new mall and you've got to have all the stores looking great on opening day, fine.

Dunno Joe. As long as the performance clause is reasonable and not one sided why not sign it?

A good one will have an incentive for early completion and your std. agreement will have timeline adjustments for change orders - so why not ?

xedos:

It opens a whole can of worms as to what constitutes a foreseeable delay. I'd be my luck to order cabinets and there would be a national trucker's strike and my customer would be wondering why I didn't plan to pick them up myself.

If I make a mistake and cause a delay, I'll apologize and make up for it. If I say the delay was not my fault, the debate is over and there will be no contractual leg on which to stand.

Joeseph- we agree with you. We thought about imposing a penalty or financial reward for finishing early/late however it seems unfair to penalize our GC for things beyond his control, and seems like a bad idea of incentivise expeditiousness (corner-cutting, anyone?) In the end, our GC is extremely busy and is working on 3-5 projects at a time- it's in his best interest to get our job done as quickly as possible so he can move on to the next.