Basic Basement Reno

Hi Everyone – we are trying to do a very basic basement remodel and struggling to get any quotes that are in our price range. Our scope is: level floors with self leveling concrete, new drywall and ceiling, insulate exterior walls and ceiling (for sound), recessed lighting and basic electric, new stairs to basement. It is a standard basement for a 20 x 50’ house. So far, both quotes I’ve received are around $80k for this work. Is that right? We had expected it to be much less given that is really basic stuff (ie nothing fancy).

mofish

in General Discussion 3 years and 2 months ago

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simpkins1970 | 3 years and 1 month ago

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Double edge sword. You dont want to go with the least expensive company, usually a representation of cutting corners somewhere. You also dont want to go with the most expensive unless they are trusted and not much higher. The price will vary pending exactly what you are doing. I have a friend who just completed one for $200,000 but he did it all out, new gym with glass walls etc. I have another who did it very basic for 68k and he wishes he spent a bit more for a few items. take your time, research and make an informed decision!

andriywww1990 | 3 years and 2 months ago

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lurker, what you are saying reinforces what i am warning about in my post above: if someone goes with a lower priced contractor or worse, shops a job looking for someone to do this for 60k, they run the risk of getting a crappy job because of all the shortcuts the contractor will have to take and they run the risk of the contractor asking for more money.

OP, i am not suggesting that you are trying to find someone to do this for 60k, but after reading some of the comments on here, i would not let this go below the 80k. i do not know, maybe 80 is already too low. do not shop the job; you will be buying trouble.

when setting a budget for anything, if you have no experience in this field, add at least 30% to the budget. when i was learning to quote jobs, contractor friends of mine used to say “tally up what you think it will cost you to do the job and make money and add 15% to it”. anytime i did not add that 15%, i did not come out where i should have been.

i will get no likes on here for saying this because people do not want to hear the truth.

Lurker | 3 years and 2 months ago

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80k is cheap, all the more so if you are pulling permits. If your basement floor is a rat slab, which is pretty common, you would need to install a new floor not just throw self-leveling cement on it. That’s $$. Ripping out all the walls and ceilings–several grand. Putting in properly de-coupled soundproofing is more complex than just sheetrock and so both materials and time is pricey. You’ll be adding all new electric and fixtures, (are you doing plumbing at all?) To fir the walls and properly insulate, and not do it wrong and cause mildew/mold/rotten brick problems is more $$ and something to watch out for. You have flooring material unless you’re keeping it bare concrete, plus baseboards and door trim. Painting alone is a few grand. New insulated windows? Doors? You haven’t mentioned architect or plans or permits which would be thousands and required most of the time.

randolph | 3 years and 2 months ago

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> @cate
> does the reno stop and you don’t have to fix anything or do the problems go on and on

surely there will be repairs/upgrades over the years (new roof, paint or other cosmetic fixes, etc) but if you do the reno correctly i would think you can avoid problems?

stevecym | 3 years and 2 months ago

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Also. When people talk numbers and make comparisons, it might help to mention if things are being or have been filed or not. That changes a lot.

chemosphere | 3 years and 2 months ago

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$80k seems high. maybe add some more details about how it’s broken down?

stevecym | 3 years and 2 months ago

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The only people who appear to attempt to make money on renovations are flippers and look at how that goes, from the perspective of the buyers.

Maybe the businessman on here, dibs, is lurking about would care to offer some input on roi.

cate | 3 years and 2 months ago

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Just curious, Randolph, if one spends $750K on a reno, does the reno stop and you don’t have to fix anything or do the problems go on and on….maybe there’s no real answer.

solehappy | 3 years and 2 months ago

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if you are paying $2mm for a house in bed stuy whats another 80k for a basement reno? less than 1% of the purchase price! thats entirely bob’s point – you buy a house to live in and people with that much money can surely find the extra scratch to make their basements more livable.

randolph | 3 years and 2 months ago

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> @Bob Marvin
> That being said, having bout my house for below market value 48 years ago , I’ve had an incredible ROI—8–10 X

ROI might matter more someone who is paying $2mm for a house in bed stuy then dropping $750k on a renovation then two years later contemplating dropping another $80k on a basement renovation. is a house you are $3mm into going to be worth $30mm in 48 years? Somehow I doubt it.

RobertGMarvin

in General Discussion 3 years and 2 months ago

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I emphatically agree with Steve about ROI. You buy a house to live in! That being said, having bout my house for below market value 48 years ago, I’ve had an incredible ROI—8–10 X when adjusted for (considerable) inflation. The big question is, aside from gratification, WHAT GOOD DOWS IT DO ME? I never want to leave Brooklyn and I have to love somewhere. The enormous ROI is like Monopoly money to me and I hate how ordinary middle class people can no longer afford a Brooklyn Brownstone. One of my favorite renovation books in the ‘70s was Joy Wilkes’ You Don’t Have to be Rich to Own a Brownstone. Sadly those days are finished for most people unless, like my son and daughter-in-law, you inherit a house, or other generational wealth.

stevecym | 3 years and 2 months ago

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I dont think the roi is ever that good anyway. I think people renovate to live in a house. The roi comes from changes to the community at large. I think. I dont think i would get the money back if i ripped a part my 1920s house and did it over. I would get the money back in bushwick but am i really getting it back or did the value of the land and shell appreciate?

randolph | 3 years and 2 months ago

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renovating a house in NYC is insanely expensive and in this market you have to wonder what the return on investment is.

Guest User | 3 years and 2 months ago

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This seems very much in line with what we paid for a basic facelift of our basement.

stevecym | 3 years and 2 months ago

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Be wary of setting budgets before talking to pros such as architects and contractors or without using some city wide metric that compares your job with like jobs. When customers do this, they isolate themselves from the better contractors and end up with contractors who for some reason have more time on their hands and might be desperate. Even though they still make a choice out of three contractors, all of those contractors may be in the risky catagory. Contractors swim in ponds together. So do customers.

If people call me and say “i have a budget of…” i often end up telling them to save their money for a year. Why should i try to take short cuts that i know i should not take and compromise my reputation?

I know this is not what people on this board want to hear, but i am telling them the truth about how this system works in this city. In a small town it would not work because people would know who the crappy contractors are and they would avoid them to the point they would be run out of business.

I am not from the city. It took me a long time t o understand how this system works in here. And now that i understand it and convey it here, people do not want to hear it.

Steve cym and doors by are the same. Steve is getting his home inspection license and in that business, telling the truth is an asset. Not something to be dismissed.

evan | 3 years and 2 months ago

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Try Innovation Construction – I remember getting a significantly lower quote from them some years back. They primarily do facade work but are also open for a range of general contracting type work.

kamkuaichio | 3 years and 2 months ago

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For what it’s worth, we got a similar quote recently for a similar project. Are you planning to pull permits for the work?

andriywww1990 | 3 years and 2 months ago

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OP, be careful as you select your contractor. find three contractors who have done a lot of this and get three quotes from them. if they are all who they say they are, they should all come in at about the same place. you might get one for 75k, one for 80k, and one for 85k. in this case, taking the 75ky one is probably not too risky but i will let you know in commercial real estate, when i sourced contractors for small jobs like this, my bosses would never let me take the lower one. they were afraid they will not get through it without asking for more money and that cannot happen in commercial (heads will roll). with homeowners, contactors come back asking for more money and get away with it because homeowners allow it to happen and:

they job shop. i watch it with my neighbors over here where i live on very small jobs where the money is just not there to trim from the job. on big jobs, 300k, maybe you can find someone who can do it for 10 or 15k less. but on small jobs, 80k, it is very risky to job shop and if you find someone willing to do this for s ay 60k, i would have to think that the quote is suspect. something is wrong. the contractor has missed something or does not understand something or has built some shortcut into the job that the other contractors would not do; you will find out what that shortcut is in about three years. keep something in mind with us contractors: we all have the same expenses; the same overhead, we buy the same materials, and we all live in the same geographic area and have to pay the same rent or mortgage; none of us have a “silver bullet”.

i often work alone and i always have done finish details (finish carpentry). years ago, when i still worked over here were i live, i would get calls from homeowners who had either had contractors walk off jobs (they ran out of money or could not get through the finer woodwork at the end; they were drywall people) or were thrown off the jobs, often because they were never there (they had to take another job to fund the completion of the first job). i would listen to the stories these people had about their horrible contractors and after a few of these stories i began to realize one thing was at the bottom of it: money; they all chose the lowest bid. a lot of them also source the names of contractors from acquaintances and very often the contractors needed the work because they were less experienced and could not find it on their own. none of these homeowners understood what happen to them in these situations and that it was preventable.

i can tell you something else that is common with contractors who swim at the bottom: they do their own electric work as opposed to hiring an electrician (if they are licensed to do electric, ok). if you run into that, throw the contractor out of your house; that person is a danger to not only to you and your family but their own assets and if they cannot care for themselves and their kid’s college education, they do not belong in your house.

the lesson here is, if you have a contractor you really like now and want to use that person but their price is a little high, ask them how long they would honor that price for. a year? if they are good you might have to wait 6 mos. for them anyway. if they will honor that price for a year out (they cannot in this environment; it will go up 5% at least), do like our parents and grandparents did and wait and save and do it a little later and spare yourself the headaches.

i have just given you the best advice anyone on the board can give anyone and it took me over 20 years to really understand it myself (and i work in it and i own a house. btw, when we did our bathroom over, i got two quotes; the second quote was literally TWICE the first quote; i went with the higher quote not because we had an extra 8k lying around, but because i KNEW all to well what can go wrong and we really only have ONE bathroom in this house; my wife would have held me responsible simply because i should know better than to allow something like that to happen).

The owner of the Tinker’s Wagon is about to become a NYS licensed home inspector. if you think i go on too much when i write on here or if some people find it a little troubling that i tell the truth, even when they do not want to hear it, that’s good. as i walk around doing home inspections, i will tell the truth and lot of it; please let your acquaintances know about me.

ceci | 3 years and 2 months ago

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    string(1) "0"
    ["deleted"]=>
    string(1) "0"
  }
  ["ID"]=>
  int(177206)
  ["caps"]=>
  array(2) {
    ["subscriber"]=>
    bool(true)
    ["bbp_participant"]=>
    bool(true)
  }
  ["cap_key"]=>
  string(15) "wp_capabilities"
  ["roles"]=>
  array(2) {
    [0]=>
    string(10) "subscriber"
    [1]=>
    string(15) "bbp_participant"
  }
  ["allcaps"]=>
  array(4) {
    ["read"]=>
    bool(true)
    ["level_0"]=>
    bool(true)
    ["subscriber"]=>
    bool(true)
    ["bbp_participant"]=>
    bool(true)
  }
  ["filter"]=>
  NULL
  ["site_id":"WP_User":private]=>
  int(1)
}

Remember, you are renovating in inflationary times!!!! Good luck!!!!