The four things every bid should say, whatever the trade
Before the trade-specific detail, a bid should establish four things. Most don’t, and the ones that do are usually from contractors who have been burned into being specific.
- Whether the price is fixed or an estimate, and what causes it to move
- Which lines are allowances, and at what unit price
- Who supplies materials — you or them — for each trade
- What is explicitly excluded
The gaps that show up most often
Across residential renovation bids, the same handful of items go unmentioned again and again. None of them are exotic. All of them are money.
- Permits and inspection fees — the single most common omission
- Dumpsters and disposal, especially the second and third container
- Subfloor levelling under new flooring
- Ceilings, in an interior paint scope
- Cabinet hardware, and who buys it
- Drywall patching after trades return for their finals
- Temporary power, heat, and a toilet on a vacant property
- Haul-away of old appliances
Trade detail
The free checklist tool covers fourteen trades — what a complete bid prices for each, and what commonly goes unsaid. It is built from the same scope categories RehabRocket uses to read bids, so it is the same vocabulary the comparison table uses.
A bid can be complete and still be wrong for you
Completeness is about whether you can see the boundaries, not about whether the price is right or the contractor is good. A thorough bid from someone who cannot start for five months is still the wrong bid.
But an incomplete bid cannot be evaluated at all. Get them complete first, then choose.