Extension - Choosing a builder

Doozergirl

Hoploz wrote: »

There's not much to choose between the prices. I would consider how easy I found them to talk to (contactable? Listened to what you want to do?) and timescale - when they can do your work. And definitely visit other clients.

I'm going through the same process just now. I've found a couple of builders from houses locally I've seen them working at in the past year. Once the quotes are in I'm going to knock on the doors and see how the homeowners actually found them to work with. (I did this for my last project 9 years ago too.) I've tried to choose the ones who look like they've left the houses looking nice when they've gone!

I think that's a great way to choose.

GBX_

Doozergirl wrote: »

Builder 3 should be VAT registered. The threshold is £83,000 turnover. If you're paying him £58k for perhaps three months work, even if they only have one customer at a time, they are going to hit the threshold in that year. £83k turnover as a company taking on extension projects is not going to pay the owner a living wage.

If he has another company, and is saying 'this one doesn't attract VAT' then that rings even more bells. You cannot open companies doing the same type of business to individually turnover less but collectively turnover more in order to avoid VAT. It's illegal.

At the moment, this guy is more expensive than one builder and effectively more expensive than the second as builder number 2 will be giving a substantial portion of your fee to HMRC.

Builder 3 may build you a lovely extension, but if he ends up having a huge bill or folds businesses when the VAT man comes knocking, you're running a risk.

Quotes are definitely, definitely better than estimates, but it might be that you need to tie down all of your specifications and requirements and agree to take the person on before you can tie them down to one.

A builder suggesting the contract is great.

Thanks for this! It's beginning to make sense! Cheers