Home Tech Cost Guides

ARCS

Does anyone use Hometech cost guides. I bought a set many years ago and used them all the time and at the time they worked great for me. I then moved in to just doing a just couple specialty trade items for a few years and have not had to use them. I went to their website and seen they had a free trial of their online estimator, and I signed up for it. Seems pretty good, but it does not seem to have as much included as their books. Let me know if anyone uses either of these or any other cost book for estimates.

Boogga

In Australia, I use Cordell Estimating. Works well for me. Do you guys have that too??

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"It's better to die on your feet than to live on your knees"

sisisi

where can I find this cost stimator or hometech cost guide

MattCoops

I never really understood the concept of having a robot do an estimate for me.

If you can't estimate a job, hire someone who can.

I guarantee the book or software can't determine all factors that come to affect the job.

For starters, do either know your overhead and how to compensate for it?

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Matt with Cupan Custom Tile & Paint of Lowell, Massachusetts
Design and installation of ceramic tile and natural stone for floor, wall, and countertops
(978) 601-8774 | cupantile@gmail.com | view tile pictures and more

silvertree

You can usually add that in the end after your takeoff. For example Kitchen at $30,000 x 1.65. 1.65 being the markup you feel you need to cover overhead and profit.
I am an estimating graduate from Hennepin Tech (night school) thats the old write it all down and add it up method. Estimating programs are only as good as the person using them, I still check everything with a pencil and calculator. So nyour system is as good as or better than anything out there. But the programs make a lot of things easier.

rbsremodeling

Hometech is good for preliminary estimates. You can bang out most estimates in an hour or two. You have customize it a bit but the data base is not to bad.

If you review the estimate and make some changes to the cost it will give you a good estimate out the box. Pricing is regional and the material cost are updated every 3 months. I think it is a hell of a guide for new remodeling contractors or those without estimating experience. It will get you well within the ball park. The templates or assemblies they have is a nice feature to speed up the estimating process and keep you from forgetting items. The specs it provides also give you a mental picture of the work so it can help with estimating cost. It also includes labor hours which can be helpful as well.

It has to be in my opinion one of the best remodeling estimating software on the market now.

My only complaint is it is not a complete management solution hence my inquiry of other software products

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Bob Kovacs

Take a look at Clear Estimates with RemodelMax. The Clear Estimates program has all of the functionality of Hometech, while also allowing you to make global changes to labor rates, which Hometech can't do. It also has descriptions linked to every item in the estimate that allow you to prepare detailed contracts and proposals very simply from inside the program.

The program is now populated with data from RemodelMax, which is a cost book/database created by one of the guys who worked at Hometech for many years. While the data still needs to be checked against your local material costs, productivity rates, and labor rates, it's a very good starting point- especially for items you haven't priced in the past.

rbsremodeling

Bob

If you have time take look at Smart Contractor. NO database yet but it has alot of promise for remodelers some of the features are very clever and way ahead of the competition. The layout is very simple and easy to follow

If you have an excel spread sheet they will let you pull into the program and use it as the database for the estimating module


It will let you post info to your website so that customers can view such as the estimate, allowance amounts, product selections and some other info so that they can view at anytime I had a demo but will get one for some of my office staff can check out some of the features in depth but I was impressed with it.

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