# Questions about getting and comparing contractor quotes

Answers to the questions that come up when collecting bids for property work — most of them true whether or not you use Quotrium.

## Comparing quotes

### How do I compare contractor quotes fairly?

Write one scope of work first, give the identical document to every contractor, and require each of them to price it line by line. Comparison is not something you do to bids after they arrive — it is something you make possible before you send them out.

If the bids are already in and each one describes the job differently, you have to level them by hand: build a table with every task down the side and each bidder across the top, mark whether each bid includes that task, excludes it or is silent, then price the gaps and add them back. Silence is the item to chase — an unmentioned task is usually an unpriced one.

Do not compare bottom lines until the columns cover the same rows. A total is only a price for whatever that particular contractor decided to include, and the bid that included least almost always looks best.

### Why are contractor quotes for the same job so different?

Usually because they are not for the same job. Absent a shared scope, each contractor writes their own — one prices a tear-off to the deck, another prices a layover; one carries permits and disposal, another assumes you will handle both — and the spread you are looking at is mostly scope, not market pricing.

The rest of the spread comes from a few predictable places: whether the contractor is already working nearby, how busy they are this month, whether the crew is in-house or subbed, what allowances they carried for undecided items, and how much contingency they buried for things they could not see.

A three-way spread wider than roughly 30% is a scope problem until proven otherwise. Before assuming the low bidder is a bargain or the high one is gouging, find out what each price actually covers.

### How many quotes should I get for property work?

Three is the working standard for anything of real value, and it is written policy for most property managers and HOA boards. Three is enough to establish a defensible market price and to show the award was not arbitrary; beyond four or five you are mostly spending your own time and burning goodwill with contractors who can tell they are filling out a field.

For small, routine work with a trade you already trust, one price you can sanity-check against last year is often the honest answer. The bidding effort should be proportional to the money at stake.

The number matters far less than the comparability. Three bids on three different scopes tell you nothing that one bid would not — the rule exists to find a market price, and non-comparable bids do not produce one.

### Should I always take the lowest bid?

No — and the reason is specific rather than a platitude about quality. The lowest bid is frequently the one that excluded the most work, so its price is genuinely lower for genuinely less, and the difference reappears later as change orders priced without competition.

Level the bids first. Once every price covers the same scope, the low number is meaningful and is often the right choice. Before that, "lowest" is a statement about the proposal rather than about the cost.

The residual reasons to pay more once bids are level: schedule, warranty terms, whether the crew is employed or subcontracted, licensing and insurance limits, and how they handled the parts of the scope that were genuinely uncertain.

### What are the red flags in a contractor quote?

A single number with no breakdown is the biggest one. A price with no itemisation cannot be compared, cannot be audited when a change order arrives, and gives you nothing to point at when a task turns out not to have been included.

Others worth stopping on: a large deposit demanded before any material is ordered, no exclusions listed at all — every real bid excludes something, so a bid with none has just not told you — no license or insurance details, a price that expires in 24 hours, allowances with no amounts attached, and a refusal to put the scope in writing.

A bid dramatically below the others is not automatically a red flag, but it is always a question. Ask what it excludes before assuming it is a bargain or a mistake.

## Writing a scope

### What should a scope of work include?

Task by task: what will be done, to what area or quantity, with what material or specification, and under what site conditions. Then the boundaries — what is explicitly not included, who supplies what, who pulls permits, who disposes of debris, and how the site is protected and left each day.

Two sections do more work than any other. The first is quantities: square footage, linear footage, unit counts, floor by floor — a bidder who has to guess the quantity is guessing the price. The second is known unknowns: the things nobody can see until demolition, named openly, with a unit price agreed for each so the eventual answer is not negotiated after the wall is open.

Keep it numbered. Numbered lines are what make a bid comparison mechanical rather than interpretive, and they are what let a contractor answer "included, excluded or unclear" for each one instead of writing prose you then have to decode.

### How do I write a scope of work if I am not a contractor?

Start from a checklist for that trade rather than from a blank page. Every trade has a standard sequence — a roof replacement is tear-off, deck inspection, underlayment, flashing, ventilation, shingles, cleanup and disposal — and working down a known list stops you omitting the item everyone forgets.

Describe the conditions you can observe and never the solutions you cannot specify. "Water stain about two feet across on the ceiling in the back bedroom, worse after heavy rain" is useful to every bidder. "Replace the valley flashing" is a diagnosis, and if it is the wrong one you have just scoped the wrong repair.

Write down what you do not know and mark it as unknown rather than guessing. A scope that says "deck condition unknown until tear-off; price deck replacement per sheet" produces comparable bids. One that quietly assumes the deck is sound produces a change order.

This is the part Quotrium automates: it drafts the numbered scope against the standard obligations of the trade, sizes it against the property facts you recorded, flags its own assumptions and lists what it could not know — and then waits for you to edit and approve it before any contractor sees it.

### What is the difference between a scope of work and an estimate?

A scope of work says what will be done; an estimate says what it will cost. The scope comes first, and the estimate is only meaningful in reference to it — an estimate with no scope attached is a number with no unit.

They are usually written by different parties for different reasons. The owner owns the scope, because it defines what they are buying. The contractor owns the price, because they are the one carrying the risk of being wrong about it.

Combining them is where bid processes go wrong. When each contractor supplies both, you receive several different jobs at several different prices and no way to tell which difference is which.

### How do I avoid change orders?

Most change orders are scope failures rather than surprises, so the fix happens before the contract: itemise the work, name the things that genuinely cannot be known yet, and agree a unit price for each of them while other contractors are still bidding.

The unit-price step is the one people skip and the one that pays. "Deck sheathing replacement at $85 per sheet as required" turns the most common roofing change order into arithmetic. Without it, that same repair is priced when the roof is open, the crew is on site, and nobody else is competing.

Then hold the line procedurally: every change in writing, with its own price and its own schedule impact, approved before the work happens. Verbal change orders are how a job's cost drifts without anyone deciding that it should.

## Working with contractors

### Why do contractors not respond to bid requests?

Because bidding costs them money and most requests look like a poor bet. A site visit, a takeoff and a written proposal is several unpaid hours, and a good contractor with a full schedule will spend those hours on the request most likely to close.

What makes a request look like a bad bet: a vague description, no indication of budget or timeline, an obvious mass email, no scope to price against, and no sign you have decided to actually do the work. What makes it look like a good one: a clear written scope, a stated decision date, a small and named bidder list, and a fast, low-effort way to send a number back.

Reducing the effort matters more than raising the price. A contractor who can price a defined scope from their phone between jobs will respond to requests they would otherwise never get to — which is why Quotrium sends a magic link with no account, no password and no app to install, rather than an invitation to sign up.

### How do I vet a contractor before inviting them to bid?

Verify license and insurance directly with the issuing body rather than from a certificate they emailed you, and check that the coverage limits are appropriate to the job. This is the step that stops being optional the moment someone is injured on your property.

Then ask for two references on work of the same type and size, completed in the last year, and actually call them. Ask specifically what changed between the bid and the final invoice, and why — that one question tells you more about how a contractor operates than any review site.

For anything structural or systems-related, confirm they pull their own permits. A contractor who wants you to pull the permit as an owner-builder is moving the liability onto you.

### How should I handle quotes across multiple properties?

Bundle the work into one scope and ask for a per-property price breakdown alongside the total. Bundling wins you the mobilisation saving — the crew, equipment and setup cost is largely fixed, so five units in one issue price better than five separate jobs — while the breakdown keeps every property individually accountable.

Insist the breakdown sums to the total. A contractor who bids some properties and not others is making a legitimate offer, but it is a partial one, and it should not be compared against a bid covering the whole portfolio as though the totals meant the same thing.

Quotrium handles this directly: a project can carry several properties with a per-property scope note, vendors submit a price per property that must reconcile to their total, and a bid covering only some of them is ranked separately as a partial bid rather than silently topping the list on price.

## Using Quotrium

### What is Quotrium?

Quotrium is a web app for property owners and managers who need comparable quotes for property work. It drafts a line-by-line scope of work for the job, sends that scope to the contractors you already use, and returns their bids scored against the same checklist — so a $4,000 one-liner and a $7,500 proposal can finally be read side by side.

It covers the trades a property owner hires for repeatedly — roofing, painting, flooring, landscaping, plumbing, HVAC, general remodel, and turnover or make-ready work among them. Work in a trade that is not offered can be requested in the app.

It is a drafting and comparison tool, not an estimator and not a marketplace. It does not tell you what work should cost, it does not match you with contractors you have never heard of, and it never touches the money.

### How does Quotrium rank quotes?

Each line of the scope carries a weight from 1 to 5. A quote earns that line's full weight when the contractor marks it included, half when they mark it ambiguous, and nothing when they exclude it — the ratio of earned to available weight is the quote's compliance score. Price is scored against the median of the active quotes. The final ranking is 75% compliance and 25% price.

The weighting is deliberate and fixed: the most complete quote wins more often than the cheapest one, because a bid that leaves out a third of the job is not a cheaper bid for the job.

The ranking is not a black box. Every scope line, every contractor's answer to it, and the exclusions and ambiguities behind each score are shown in a leveling matrix, and the whole comparison exports as a PDF report.

### Do contractors have to pay to quote through Quotrium?

No. Contractors quote for free and never pay for a lead. Quotrium is funded by owner and property-manager subscriptions only.

They also do not need an account. An invited contractor opens a magic link on their phone, reads the scope with photos, prices it line by line and submits — no signup, no password, no app. Most finish in a few minutes.

Creating an account afterwards is optional and only exists so a contractor can see their own job list across the owners who invited them.

### What do contractors see about me and my property?

An invited contractor sees the approved scope of work, the project reference, the deadline, the city and state, the property facts you recorded, and the photos and documents you attached. They do not see your street address, your name, your contact details, or the other bidders' prices.

Your identity and address cross only when you select a contractor — at which point the winner receives your contact details so the job can actually happen.

Questions from a contractor are private to that contractor. A vendor cannot see another vendor's questions, answers, quote or proposal documents at any point.

### Does Quotrium send my photos to an AI model?

No. Scope drafting is text-only: the model receives the trade, your written description, and the property facts you recorded. Photos and videos are never used as model input — they are shown to the contractors bidding on the job.

The street address is never sent to the model either. It receives the city and state, which bear on climate and code, and nothing that identifies the property.

Every model call is logged with its prompt, its output, its cost and its outcome, so what was sent is auditable rather than a matter of trust.

### How much does Quotrium cost?

The first project is free end to end — drafted scope, up to ten contractor invites, and the ranked comparison — with no credit card. Paid plans are $24 a month for self-managing landlords, $129 for managers running several jobs a month, and $299 for larger portfolios; paying for a year up front saves 31%, 17% and 17% respectively.

A project means one scope of work sent to one set of contractors, from the first draft through to the ranked comparison and your final selection.

Nothing is deleted when the free project ends. Your scope, quotes and comparison stay available; a plan is required to start a second project. Paid plans are sold as a monthly project allowance — one, six or fifteen — which refills at the start of each month.

### What counts as a project?

One scope of work sent to one set of contractors, from the first draft through to the ranked comparison and your final selection.

A project can cover several properties. Five units turned over under one scope is one project, not five — which is also how you get the mobilisation saving of issuing them together.

Re-issuing a scope, inviting more contractors, or receiving revised quotes all happen inside the same project. It is the job, not the round of bidding.

### What happens after my free project?

Nothing disappears. Your scope, your quotes and your comparison stay available, and you can still export the report.

A plan is required to start a second project. You choose one when you get there rather than up front, which is why the first project needs no credit card.

Your vendor book carries across too — the contractors you added stay on your list for every project after the first.

### Does Quotrium handle payments to my contractor?

No, and it is not planned. Contracting, scheduling and payment happen off-platform, directly between you and the contractor you select.

Quotrium's job ends when you have picked a bid and exported the comparison. It does not hold funds, take a cut of the work, or sit between you and the person doing it.

This is also why the platform never charges contractors. There is no transaction for it to take a percentage of.

### How is Quotrium different from Angi, Thumbtack or a lead marketplace?

Lead marketplaces sell your project to contractors who paid to reach you. Quotrium does the opposite: you invite the contractors you already trust, and they are never charged. Nobody buys their way into your bid list.

The second difference is what comes back. A marketplace returns several contractors and several self-written proposals, leaving the comparison to you. Quotrium sends one scope to all of them and returns their answers to that same scope, scored line by line.

If what you need is to find a contractor at all, a marketplace or a referral is the right tool. If you have contractors and need their bids to be comparable, that is the problem Quotrium solves.

### What happens if the scope changes after I have sent it out?

Re-issue it. Quotrium versions the scope, writes a summary of what changed, and emails every invited contractor that summary, so nobody is left bidding against a document that no longer applies.

Quotes submitted against the old version are marked as being on a superseded scope and are shown separately rather than mixed into the ranking. A contractor can confirm their price still stands, which re-pins their quote to the current version and rescores it.

This is the mechanism that keeps a comparison honest over time. Without versioning, a late scope change quietly turns a like-for-like comparison back into an unlevel one.

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Source: https://quotrium.com/faq · Quotrium — Comparable quotes for property work