We recently had planning permission to build a 2 story extension to our house, about 23'x12' - in theory pretty 'standard', although we asked for that to include fitting of kitchen, bathroom and converting a neighbouring room to a downstairs toilet.
Our 'guesstimate' prior to planning permission after talking to a builder was around 30k (at 100GBP per sq ft, seemed reasonable to me, based on what Ive read here).
Our first quote is at 73k, our second is at 93k (oh plus VAT! - the first quote isnt VAT registered).
Talking to a friend of ours who had similar work done around 4 years ago, theirs cost 30k!
Now our house is only a few miles away but in a more upmarket area. Given the change in market conditions, does anyone feel our quotes are somewhere in cloud-cuckoo land? (We live in Camberley, Surrey).
When asking for a quote should we be asking for the minimum work or add in these extras. Ideally I would like an itemised quote so we can see where the costs are and decide to scale back based on where the most expense is.
Any comments or guidance on how to approach this? We're still waiting for more quotes, and tried to be open with our builders but maybe they think we are made of money and can take advantage. (Of course the quotes they gave us amounted to about one paragraph and a single price so we cannot judge except by comparison).
I'm about to downgrade the local building population to something not much higher in evolutionary scales to something about the same as a can of beans.
Oh and for more amusement, we had a local 'good' double glazing guy come out, spend a couple of hours going over our requirements etc, etc. No hard sale - we wanted to buy! Have yet to hear a word from the scumbag about our 'quote'.
I guess its the state of the market - but have yet to meet a 'bad double glazing' salesmen as they seem to just 'ignore' us even when we sign up for those people dishing out leaflets in shopping centres.