How to Read a Renovation Quotation in Singapore

A quotation is a scope of works, not a price

The single most useful habit is to stop reading a quotation as a number and start reading it as a description of what somebody has promised to do. The price is the consequence. What matters is the list above it.

A quotation that gives you one figure for "kitchen renovation" has told you nothing you can check, agree to, or hold anybody to. It is also the most common red flag in this market, and it is common because it works: a lump sum is easy to say yes to and impossible to argue with later.

The ten trades every quotation is read against

Whatever the job, a renovation quotation in Singapore covers some subset of the same ten trades. Each is priced in a unit the trade uses, and a line without a unit is a line you cannot compare between two quotes.

Comparing three quotes without a spreadsheet

Line up the three documents by trade rather than by total. Almost immediately one of them will be missing something the other two have, and that difference is usually most of the price gap.

Then check the quantities against each other. Two contractors quoting the same kitchen should arrive at a similar number of feet run of carpentry, because the kitchen is the size it is. When one says twelve feet and another says eighteen, one of them has measured wrong or is quoting something different, and it is worth knowing which before you choose on price.

• —Match trade to trade, not total to total
• —Compare quantities before rates: a cheap rate on twice the quantity is not cheap
• —Anything appearing on two quotes and not the third is a question, not a saving

The three things usually missing

A professional engineer endorsement, where the works involve hacking a masonry wall. Published guides put this at roughly $800 to $2,000, and it is almost never in the headline figure.

The permit, the final clean and the debris removal. Small individually, and together they are a line nobody wants to discover after signing.

An exclusions list. A quotation that states what it does not cover is not being evasive, it is being precise, and it is the section that prevents the argument at handover. Its absence is the warning, not its presence.

Payment should be staged, and written down

Renovation here runs on stage payments rather than a deposit and a final bill. The common shape is ten per cent as a deposit, forty after hacking and masonry, forty on carpentry, and the last ten on handover. Each of those is tied to a trade being finished rather than to a date, which is the entire point of the convention.

What matters more than the exact split is that it is on the document and tied to something observable. "Forty per cent on commencement" is checkable. "Progressive payments as agreed" is not.

GST, and whether it should be there at all

GST in Singapore is 9%. It should appear as its own line rather than folded into the rates, so you can see it.

Not every contractor charges it. A business only has to register for GST once its taxable turnover passes the statutory threshold, so a smaller outfit may legitimately quote without it. What should worry you is a quote that adds GST without a GST registration number on the document.