So get more quotes!

that seems about right, although geography matters - We demo’d a small house that was built as a summer lake cabin (so not built to be lived in year round) - cost $60k in the midwest - transporting all the machinery needed plus landfill disposal is $$$

@HU-867564120, yes, getting more quotes is helpful, but at the end of the day what they quote me might be self-serving, so that's why I posed the question to this community. I'm interested to hear what kinds of things might make a demo quote so high, or if people have experience that tells them this quote is way out of range. @la_la Girl, I'm curious to know if you are the professional or the homeowner, or both. So you're saying the demo was 60K because of transporting the machinery, maybe? What else might make it high? And thank you both for your input. I really appreciate it.

Demolishing a house produces a massive amount of debris and most landfills charge for dumping it.

Have you consider having the house stripped of anything recyclable and then offering the house to the fire department for a controlled burning exercise? The volume you have to haul out will be less.

This article was from a while back and many environmental/zoning regulations have changed, but worth looking into if it can be a possible solution in your area.

https://www.zillow.com/learn/how-to-burn-down-your-house-and-why/

Cost would likely be related tto Type of material being demod.wether items are being salvaged, site access, proximity to dumps. thesecare just iff the top of my head. what did the quote detail? have you asked the bidder?

In-ground pool? I don’t know what demo-ing that would cost, though I expect it would be expensive. That concrete has got to be disposed of somewhere.

Besides all the points made by others, there is the consideration that you may be getting a "consumer" rather than a "builder" price. IOW, you're a one-time buyer.

Every time my current excavator bumps into my wife shopping, he asks if I'm happy with him and will use him again.

Goodbye old friend. (Not really!)

Note shoring at your feet and at far end at C$180 per lf.

Replicating some of my oldest memories, moving soil with my toy excavators. It was easier...and cheaper then! (The plastic sheeting is an attempt to keep the loose soil walls from collapsing in the rain.)

I've never demolished without building, so the price in total would include excavation...not counting the extra costs that may be involved when the excavation hits, say, running water.

Where I live (Toronto) demo and fill of an in ground pool cost $10,000, 15 years ago. So your price seems as if it's in the ballpark. Demo and disposal is a lot of work.

re your question: am the homeowner - I am saying it is a lot of time & effort for the demo crew to have the needed machinery and transport it to the job site plus there is knowledge and coordination to cap utilities etc etc..

When was the last time you did a renovation (small and major) or a build?

Everything is expensive these days, and even more so in the areas of construction labor and materials.

It also isn't easy or cheap to get rid of your "trash". Your local dump might be closed or not accepting construction debris any longer and the contractor might have to haul it a much longer distance or even to another state.

I am a homeowner who completely remodeled a house over several years and did a major addition in one state (2010 - 2019) and then designed and built a new house in another state (2021).

Chispa, I've never done a renovation. All I know is that Dr. Google estimated that demolitions for my size house would be far below 90K. Dr. Google isn't a trustworthy professional, but I did wonder about the fact that it estimated 50k below what the contractor did. Also, I vaguely remember that the contractor mentioned 40K for demolition early in the project, but that was before all the plans were finalized. I wanted to ask people who do have experience with this so that I know I'm not being taken advantage of.

Your chosen GC can likely get a better price from his subs, folding the work into the total build cost. Contractors really hate working one offs for clueless homeowners playing GC. You get higher prices because of a lack of establed relationships, the pita factor, the handholding required, and the education needing to be provided. A GC gets a price, says yes, and the project is on, without all of that.

If the pool is going to be part of where you want to build a home, I’m surprised it isn’t more. All of that has to come out to undisturbed soil. Then a ton of verified compacted fill is needed.

@Zumi, your point is very well taken. On one hand, I want to trust my general contractor. I do trust him. He came highly recommended. On the other hand, I wanted to protect my interests because I hear all the horror stories about being overcharged in our particular state. I wanted to get feedback to make sure people thought that this price tracks. Meanwhile, I think I've found out why the demo cost was so high. It's because we are unable to knock down the whole property as we renovate. Due to setbacks and local codes, we have to leave some parts of the structure intact as we destroy other parts. I was told by another demo company that this makes the demo quite complicated. We're leaving the slab intact, so they can't just run machines through the house to get to the back. Sounds logical. What do y'all think? Does that track? Could those factors contribute to a 90K demo?

Do you have ANY Idea how many dumpsters this will require? The come and go of those dumpsters? The fill of the pool, leaving a slab, partial home intact? I'm surprised it isn't more, and that is without knowing the state you live in.

Do you have any idea the cost of diesel fuel? ?

Good lord, it costs me 200 bucks to get a couch delivered ten miles from my receiver and into a house.

@JAN MOYER, no, I don't. That's why I asked.

When we did the "addition" in LA, really a detached guest house, we had to leave one wall intact to consider it a "renovation". It looked like a Hollywood set with a fake facade propped up by 2x4s. Our builder had been building in that area for decades, so at some point during the build he tore that old flimsy wall down and re-framed everything with new materials. It would have been crazy to leave up any of that crappy 50 year old structure.

Buy a different lot, with an easier full teardown. Your add on costs to this are not going to be fixed at 90K. It is going to end up being double that. Because the only way to do this is time and materials.

@Chispa, yes, I know what you mean. Did your GC say that this added to the demo costs, because they had to "shore up" (if that's the right term) the wall during demo? I actually think ours might be even more complicated than that because it's not just one wall we have to leave up. It's multiple sections in various places.

Ask the people that gave you the quote.

@Jun Akimi, this was 12 years ago so I don't remember the breakdown. The structure was a 50 year old 3-car garage barely made out of cardboard! We tore it down and built a "carriage" house (guest house with basement and 3-car garage). What cost us 80K more was going from a slab to a 10 ft tall basement with light-wells and steel beams that met earthquake code. The structure was in the back of the property, so not very visible from the street, which is what made it easy for my GC to rebuild the wall he was "supposed" to keep. It didn't really matter, because it wasn't as if they gave us any break on the property taxes! The tax assessor was knocking on the door before the ink on the COO was dry!

Your original post is a bit misleading, as it isn't really "just" a demolition. Having to keep parts of a structure intact certainly makes everything more difficult and costly for everyone working on the project.

We paid $15k to have a 2,000 sqft brick house down and out. It was comparable to impact fees if you were building a new house on vacant land in my area.

Of course selective demo costs more. It is more time consuming to shore up one area and selectively demo around it, repeat this several times and it is a giant pain in the a**. Remember the old adage, time is money..................

This sounds like a license to print money for any contractor. And a really easy way to get red tagged from an AHJ if anything untoward happens.

@millworkman, I thought that might be the case. It's actually kind of a relief to know that this is what is hiking the demo cost so much. There's always the worry about getting price gouged as a first time home remodeler, but it sounds like the consensus is that our project is quite complex and labor intensive, so this justifies the costs. I feel better about it. Thank you, everyone, for your input. It's been helpful.

@chispa, yes, I can see that my original post didn't include info about the shoring up. I discovered that this was an issue after I had posted. Again, this input has all been very helpful. Thank you. As a non professional, I can guess at what aspects of a project might complicate it, but I don't know for sure. It's good to have opinions aside from the interested parties.

What plans do you mean the quote was for you say you want to leave up walls this is no simple demoltion and a pool removal is a huge job all kinds of stuff involved . A demolition is exactly that everything goes leaving any specific walls up is not demolition a totally different job and entails many complicated things. May I ask why walls are being kept at all?

" A demolition is exactly that everything goes leaving any specific walls up is not demolition a totally different job and entails many complicated things. "

No, it is called demoloition or selective demo. What else would it be called? Happens all the time on Long Island as well for the exact same reason chispa brought up.

I understand that but this is no real demolition and of course costs a lot more money . You can call it whatever you like but the fact is it is complicated and you pay for that.

" You can call it whatever you like but the fact is it is complicated and you pay for that. "

I agree and was just telling you it is still called demolition.

We can now see the job is more complex, and we can now see what others have done and paid for their home demolitions. And still, I hope you get three quotes. As a first time home remodeler, it's an important rule to learn. Some of the quotes may vary wildly. If they don't they tell you the going rate is similar. From each contractor, you might also learn something as they walk the property and point things out. Getting quotes is time consuming, but a good education. Good luck!