Three written bids to re-clad the same house can easily come in at $58,000, $74,000 and $91,000. Picture a 1990s two-storey in Coquitlam with failing stucco, about 3,200 square feet of wall, and an owner who wants fiber cement siding on a rainscreen. Same house, same walkthrough, same request. Homeowners comparing renovation contractor bids like these tend to assume the low number belongs to the efficient contractor and the high one to the greedy one. From what we see pricing exterior work across Metro Vancouver, most of a spread that wide traces back to scope: what each contractor included, what they carried as an allowance, and what they left out without saying so.
The low bid in a set like that usually has no line for sheathing repair and a small lump sum for scaffolding. The high bid prices a full tear-off, a realistic count of rotted plywood sheets, and access for the whole job. Put all three on the same scope and the gap often shrinks to 10 or 15 percent.
That leveling is the owner's job. It takes an evening and a spreadsheet.
How do you compare renovation contractor bids fairly?
Give every contractor the same written scope, then rebuild each bid on one sheet, line by line: demolition and disposal, sheathing repair, membrane, rainscreen, cladding, flashings, windows and trim, access, permits, warranty, schedule, payment terms and GST. Price anything a bid excludes and add it to that bid. Only the leveled totals are worth comparing. Allow two to four weeks from the first call to the last bid.
Write the scope before you call anyone
The first step in comparing renovation contractor bids happens before any contractor sees the house. The most common mistake we run into is a homeowner who calls four companies and asks each one, on site, what they would do. Each contractor gives a fair answer, and no two answers match. One proposes an overclad over the old stucco, one a full tear-off, one a tear-off with new windows. Four bids, four projects, and no fair way to line them up.
A one-page scope fixes most of that. It needs decisions, and it does not need drawings:
- Tear-off or overclad, and on which elevations
- Cladding material and profile, with a product line if you have one in mind
- Windows: left alone, re-flashed, or replaced
- Trim, soffit and gutter work, if any
- Who applies for permits
- Your target start window and any dates the site has to stay quiet
If you cannot make those calls yet, pay for advice first. A building envelope consultant's report or a paid site assessment costs a small fraction of the project and gives every bidder the same starting point. On strata buildings this step is standard. On houses it is rare, which is a big part of why residential bids spread so far.
Contractors who receive a written scope return tighter numbers, because they know everyone else is pricing the same thing. Plan on one to two weeks to schedule the site visits and another 5 to 10 business days for each written estimate after the visit.
Build one sheet and level every bid against it
Give each bid its own column and run your scope items down the left side. Go line by line and record what each contractor priced: a dollar figure where they gave one, a short note where they did not.
| Line item | What to check |
|---|---|
| Demolition and disposal | Number of bins, hazardous materials testing on older buildings |
| Sheathing and framing repair | Allowance, unit rate, or excluded |
| Weather barrier | Product named, or a vague "building paper" |
| Rainscreen | Strapping depth, vented and drained at top and bottom |
| Cladding | Brand, profile, thickness, factory or field-painted finish |
| Flashings | Sill pans, head flashings, kick-outs, deck and roof junctions |
| Windows and trim | Re-flash, extension jambs, or replacement |
| Access | Scaffold or lift, months included, cost per extra month |
| Permits and inspections | Who applies, who pays |
| Site protection and cleanup | Landscaping, tarps, nail sweep |
| Warranty | Term in years, in writing, labour and materials |
| Schedule | Start window and duration in weeks |
| Payment terms | Deposit, progress draws, holdback |
| GST | Included or added on top |
Wherever a bid is silent, write "not included" and put a number on it yourself, using the other bids or a phone call to the contractor. In our experience, silent lines cause more change orders on exterior jobs than anything else.
Hazardous materials need their own row on any house built before 1990. WorkSafeBC requires a hazardous materials survey before renovation or demolition work on those buildings, and some older stucco and drywall finishes contain asbestos. One bid may include the survey and another may assume someone else will order it.
GST deserves a note too. Renovation work in BC carries 5% GST, and some contractors quote with it while others add it at the bottom. On a $74,000 job that is $3,700, enough to make two identical bids look different.
Allowances, unit rates, and where a low bid hides
Nobody can see behind your cladding until it comes off. On a Lower Mainland house built before rainscreens became standard, finding some wet or rotted sheathing is close to certain. Each bid handles that unknown in one of three ways.
An allowance is a dollar figure set aside, say $3,000 for sheathing repair. If the repair comes to $7,000, you pay the difference. A unit rate is a price per piece: typically $180 to $350 per sheet of plywood replaced in Greater Vancouver right now, or $400 to $900 per stud bay of framing repair. An exclusion means the bid does not cover it at all.
Low bids hide in allowances. A contractor can make a number look $5,000 cheaper by carrying a $1,000 sheathing allowance against a competitor's $6,000, knowing the real figure will arrive later as a change order. The bigger allowance is usually the more honest guess, and you pay for the actual repair either way.
Here is the counterintuitive part of comparing renovation contractor bids. The one with the longest list of exclusions is often the one to trust. A contractor who writes that the price excludes rot beyond 10 sheets, relocating electrical behind the cladding, and repairs to a deck ledger has walked your house carefully and is showing you where the risk sits. A bid with no exclusions at all usually means nobody thought about them, and those conditions are still on your house.
Unit rates are the fairest way to price hidden damage. Ask every bidder for the same three: per sheet of sheathing, per stud bay of framing, and per linear foot of sill plate. You can compare those line by line, and nobody wins the job by guessing low on quantity.
Access, permits, and other lines that vanish
Scaffolding is the line that most often disappears from residential bids, or shows up as one small number with no duration attached. For a single-family home in Metro Vancouver, supply, erection, one month of rental and dismantle typically runs $4,000 to $14,000. A full re-clad takes longer than a month. Ask each contractor how many months their access number covers and what each extra month costs. Our breakdown of scaffolding and access costs on an exterior renovation goes through the numbers in more detail.
Permits are the other one. In Vancouver, Burnaby and most other Lower Mainland municipalities, a full re-clad that changes the wall assembly usually needs a building permit, while small like-for-like repairs often do not. Check with your municipality before you sign. Under the BC Building Code, new cladding on houses in our wet coastal climate generally needs a capillary break, which in practice means a drained, vented rainscreen cavity. A bid that puts cladding straight onto the sheathing, or excludes the permit entirely, may be pricing a wall that will not pass inspection. Ask who applies, who pays the fee, and who meets the inspector.
Smaller items add up as well. Old stucco is heavy and fills several bins. Protecting landscaping, tarping decks and sweeping the yard for nails each run somewhere between $500 and $2,000.
Check the paper behind each price
A price only means something if the company behind it carries the right coverage. Before you level the numbers, ask each bidder for:
- A WorkSafeBC clearance letter, which you can also request yourself online. If your contractor is not registered, you can be held responsible for their unpaid premiums.
- A certificate of commercial general liability insurance showing the limit. $2 million is a common floor for residential exterior work, and strata buildings often ask for $5 million.
- The warranty in writing, with the term in years and whether it covers labour, materials, or both.
- A business licence valid in your municipality, or an Inter-Municipal Business Licence.
Payment terms belong on the sheet as well. BC's Builders Lien Act requires the owner to hold back 10% of each payment for 55 days after the work is complete. A bid that asks for 40% up front, or ignores the holdback, moves risk onto you whatever the total says. On a job this size, a deposit of 10 to 15 percent with progress draws tied to finished stages is a reasonable structure. Our guide to what a BC renovation contract should contain covers the clauses to look for.
What not to do with the bids once you have them
Do not send one contractor's bid to another and ask them to beat it. Homeowners do it all the time, and it backfires. The contractor who matches the number has to find the money somewhere, and on exterior work the cheapest place to find it is in things you will not see for five years: thinner strapping, fewer fasteners, a bead of sealant where a metal flashing belonged.
Ask the high bidder a different question. What would they remove to reach your budget, and what does each removal risk? A good contractor answers with numbers. How they handle that conversation tells you more about how they will run your job than the price does.
Then call references, and ask for at least one from a job finished three or more years ago. A wall that has been through three Lower Mainland winters shows whether the flashings and sealant were done properly.
When the leveled bids are still far apart
Sometimes the gap survives the spreadsheet. Two bids on the same scope, with the same allowances and the same access, still sit 20% apart. By then the difference is usually in how the work gets done: crew size, how many elevations are open at once, whether a supervisor is on the house every day or drops by twice a week. An eight-week schedule with a full-time lead hand costs more than a fourteen-week schedule with a rotating crew, and the shorter one leaves your walls open through fewer rainy weeks. Ask each contractor to walk you through their schedule week by week and pick the plan you understand.
Strata councils use the same method at a larger scale, with a formal tender and an envelope consultant leveling the bids. We wrote separately about why strata renovation quotes in BC vary by 40% and how councils close that gap.
How we write our estimates
MV Construction has priced and built exterior renovations across Greater Vancouver and Vancouver Island for more than 10 years. We are fully licensed and WCB-insured, our workmanship is warranty-backed, and every estimate we send is written and itemized, with allowances, unit rates and exclusions listed so you can drop it into a leveling sheet next to anyone else's. Tear-offs, rainscreen retrofits and full siding replacement are a core part of our exterior renovation work, from the first site visit through final inspection.
If you already have bids in hand and want one more to compare against, call us at (778) 375-5672 or request a fixed-scope written estimate. Send us the scope you gave everyone else and we will price exactly that.
