How Kept prices a repair from your inspection report

How does Kept price a repair from an inspection report?

Kept reads your home inspection report and prices each finding the way a contractor builds a bid: labor hours at the trade's local wage, plus materials, plus the charges a contractor adds, plus local sales tax. Every line on the memo shows those parts, so you can see where a number comes from before you put it in front of the seller. Findings that need someone on site, like foundation movement, get flagged for a contractor quote instead of a guessed number.

Use the memo as your starting number for a repair request, and get real quotes on the few big items it flags.

Key takeaways

• Each price is labor, materials, contractor charges and tax, and the memo shows every part.
• Wages are anchored to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data for the home's metro area.
• A memo is a cost estimate, not a contractor bid and not the inspector's opinion.

What goes into the price of one repair?

A contractor never bills for the part alone. Kept adds up the same pieces a contractor does:

• Labor: the hours the job takes, times the hourly rate for that trade in your area.
• Materials: the shingles, the water heater, the fittings, whatever the scope calls for.
• Trip charge: what a contractor bills to show up with a truck and tools.
• Permit, on jobs that usually need one, such as a water heater swap.
• Equipment and disposal: rentals, dumpster fees, hauling away the old unit.
• Markup: the contractor's overhead and profit.
• Local sales tax on the total.

Splitting the price this way matters when you negotiate. If the seller's agent says a figure is too high, you can point to the part in question instead of defending a single number.

What does a priced line look like?

Kept's public sample memo prices a fictional house in Franklin, Tennessee, in the Nashville metro. Here are three of its lines, broken into parts.

The full sample memo lists 27 findings and totals $13,760. These three lines make up $4,107 of it.

Notice the trip charge. On the downspout job it's $75 against $93 of labor, which is why small repairs cost more than people expect. On lines a buyer could handle alone, the memo also shows a do-it-yourself figure: the downspout extensions come to about $85 in materials and an hour of work.

Where do the wage numbers come from?

Labor rates are anchored to the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) program. BLS says the program "produces employment and wage estimates annually for approximately 830 occupations," and that the estimates "are available for the nation as a whole, for individual states, and for metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas."

The home's address decides which metro's wages apply. A roofer's hour in one metro can cost a lot more than in another, so the same finding gets a different price in a different market. If the home sits outside a metro area, the national wage applies.

Why do some lines show a range and others one number?

The range reflects how confident the estimate is on that line. When the finding is clear and the scope is well defined, like three downspout extensions, the memo shows one figure. When the estimate is less certain, often because the report is vague about scope, the memo shows a low and a high figure around the estimate.

A wide range is useful information in itself. It tells you which lines are worth a contractor's visit before you commit to a number.

Which findings get a contractor quote instead of a price?

Some repairs can't be priced honestly from a report. Kept flags these as needing a professional quote instead of giving a formula figure:

• Foundation structural movement (see foundation cracks on an inspection report)
• A whole-house repipe, common with galvanized pipes or polybutylene pipes
• Regrading and drainage correction

What those jobs cost depends on what a contractor or engineer finds once they open things up. The memo tells you which lines they are, so your phone calls go where they count. For how to get those quotes before your deadline, see how to get repair estimates during the inspection period.

What are the limits of a Kept estimate?

• Kept publishes no accuracy percentage.
• It doesn't replace a contractor walk-through. A contractor on site sees things an inspection report never records.
• It isn't the inspector's opinion. Your inspector finds the problems, and Kept prices them.
• Kept doesn't perform or sell repair work, so it has no stake in how big the number is.

How do you use the estimate in a repair request?

Put the scope, the trade and the dollar figure on each line, and say where the figure came from. A line that names the rear roof slope, 140 square feet of shingles and $1,439 is much harder to wave off than a request to fix the roof.

• For wording, use the buyer repair request letter template.
• For which findings belong on the list, see what to ask for after a home inspection.
• If you'd rather take the total as money, compare a seller credit vs. a price reduction.

Your contract sets the deadline for the request and how it has to be delivered, so confirm both with your agent.

Is a Kept estimate the same as a contractor bid?

No. A bid is a promise from one company to do the work for a price. A Kept estimate is what the job typically costs in your metro, built from its parts. It gives you a number to negotiate with while there's still time, and a bid is still worth getting on the big items.

Who is Kept for?

Home buyers in their inspection period and the buyer's agents working with them. Kept prices every line of an inspection report for $79, usually under 4 hours.

If your inspection period is already running, upload your report to Kept and get every finding priced, with the parts of each price shown.

Sources

• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics