Depending upon the construction environment in your area, you may have a hard time getting the contractor's willing to break down the construction costs as you have laid out, unless you pay each contractor for their time to submit a bid that way. You may have a better chance by breaking down the cost by trade rather (rough carpentry, plumbing, roofing, finished carpentry, painting, etc.) than by room.

If you have an architect involved in your project they many times handle or advise you on such matters.

Do you have all your materials and finishes picked out for the whole house and can give that list by brand and model # to the contractors?

If you don't, you are only going to get allowances that will most likely be too low. Your bids will just be "guesses", so you should have a high percentage of funds over the bid set aside, so you can get the finishes you actually want.

When you tell a builder you are going for above average finishes, the odds of them having the same picture in their head of what that entails is pretty low.

Are you GC'ing this yourself? I am afraid you will nit get many subs willing to work under your parameters. They will break out pricing that way for sure, especially for a homeowner self GC'ing. It is just not the way the inddustry works. Also collecting bids and worrying about closet layouts are a ways off. You need to have all your selections picked and locked in before your are are ready to even ask for bids. If you do not know exactly what you want no own can possibly give you a bid. Sounds to me another case of you do not know what you do not know. You are getting way ahead of yourself.

Thanks all. @mark bischak - do you have a template dor bids that tou ofder to contractors to share? i like the bids by trade option, good advice.

@chispa and @milworkman - i am surprised i have to pick out before getting bids all finishes. this will be difficult eap for a 4 bedroom, 4 bath home. i am not GC ’ing… but will certainly be needing to know if there are rooms like bath and kitchen we might hire another contractir when time comes and have our GC finish whatever they committed to finish. the reason i broke ir down by room type is to have flexibility at later time and know what our Gc cost is vs ofher vendor if i decide to hire someone more specific to ghat area.

do you have any templates to use for bids and also what prep work is ideal to have prior to seeiking bids.

" i am surprised i have to pick out before getting bids all finishes. "

How do they know what to give you a bid on if you do not know what you want? Multiple prices and finishes for EVERYTHING and at all sorts of price points. Typically you work with the chosen GC to iron this all out and then he will get bids.

Our architect helped us evaluate bids. I'm not sure if all provide those services. If you go with a cost-plus contract you have more control over the level of finishes staying within your expectations. There is so much more to choosing a GC than just their bids. So much more. We chose a builder with 40 years experience building in our area, a family man who lives in the area, lists of former customers, working relationships with all of the engineers and city people that we have met/dealt with. Our GC is a knowledgeable, patient and kind person who treats his employees well and seems to know all of "the best" tradespeople in town.

Just my 2cents. Maybe some of this experience reflects something important to you, maybe cost comparisons for labor is more important to you. It might depend where in the country you are.

In a HCOLA?

Yeah, nope. No contractor is going to be doing your job for you. You need to be spending money up front on design and specifications. Otherwise, you are a pie in the sky tire kicker, whose approach goes straight into the trash. There's zero point in anyone "giving a bid" on high end marble that's 100K a slab, when your definition of high end is $100 a square foot. That's not how construction works.

You are in the mere "can I afford this" stage, and with you wanting to GC, but not having a clue about being a CG, means the answer is NOPE, you can't afford it.

Well, you don't have to pick out all finishes, but then your builder will just be using allowances, which is where you can get into trouble!

Our final build costs came in 40% over what our builder gave us as a "bid". When I first saw the bid, I knew there was no way we would get what we wanted at that price, so we had him increase some line items. We also built during 2021/covid and had those price increases affect the build too.

Some examples, my plans showed a custom sized front door unit. Our builder priced a nice standard sized unit ... cost difference $20K vs $8K. Our builder priced in standard windows used by most of his customers, but we decided to use Marvin, which were 3 times the cost. The plans showed lots of built-ins and cabinets. I don't think our builder looked at that carefully! The bid showed $68K for cabinets. The actual quote from the cabinet maker was $120K.

We were cost plus, so when final bids came in, that was the cost to get the finishes we wanted.

One of the subs (painter) said our house had better quality and nicer finishes than what they normally do ... and we paid for that!

Just ask lots of questions and make sure you and the builder are on the same page when you are talking about products, quality and finishes of everything in the house.

An Excel spread sheet or an old-fashioned green ledger sheet, with each company on the left side in the first column and the breakdown across the top, one for each trade.

But it may be challenging to get that information from the contractors, as Mark said.

You're almost better off making sure each contractor is bidding on the same exact scope of the job, and then comparing the totals.

"...the reason i broke ir down by room type is to have flexibility at later time and know what our Gc cost is vs ofher vendor if i decide to hire someone more specific to ghat area."

The GC you want is going to sniff this out immediately and not want anything to do with you. I can't blame him.

Good luck with getting detailed bids. Most contractors give you a very general bid and you have to pray that there won't be any missed costs. Oops that is a change order.

No "change orders" if you are doing a cost plus build ... just more invoices to pay!

You are in the process of permitting, but have no idea what it is you are doing or how much it’s going to cost? Yeah, that’s going to go well.

I thank some of the advice. we are not entirely blind on the process. we had contractors come and do initial assessment for possible costs… but really there is no way to know if those estimates are trustable until we created detailed plans and gained approvals. i am still not sure i saw a standard template to use for contractor bids management or a softward tool that can make this process easy. anyways, appreciats all the advice.

" i am still not sure i saw a standard template to use for contractor bids management or a softward tool that can make this process easy. anyways "

For a one off homeowner there is not. Every situation is different.

You need to put this on hold for a year or so until you can get on the schedule of the best builder in your area. It is very clear that you are not going to be able to act as a GC, when you are not even understanding creating decent specification documents to approach subs. Otherwise, you have nothing but huge delays and massive cost overruns ahead.

Respectfully, very respectfully, you are going to have a VERY hard time, if not an impossible time, to impose your desired way of comparing costs onto GCs, who by that point won't have very much interest in doing your project, because you will be perceived as difficult.

I completely understand your desire to compare costs. But as I have stated before, the relative cost of building a highly complex house, with so many subcontractors, different types of materials, unknown zoning and weather issues, and every manner of thing that can arise during the build, means that in many/most cases, the things that arise like these things need to be handled with understanding, honesty, fairness, and what good will all of your cost-pickiness do for you then?

You want so badly to remain in control of costs. You seem to think that you can control that, if only you can ascertain the lowest cost contractor. But which contractors will be most incentivized to go along with your picky requests up front? imho, it will probably be the least busy/less experienced, and the ones MOST interested in low-balling you. And then during the build, there will be excuse after excuse after excuse about why you need to pay more.

You are entering into a 2-way relationship here. This is not a one-day deal you can make, but a year or more long relationship with someone you need to mesh with and trust. You are focusing on the wrong things, and trying to force contractors you do not know to conform to your one-off request. It is really, asking too much.

All of your concerns about the costs of each individual part and piece of your new home can be addressed by speaking with past clients of your potential builders. Ask them: did you feel ripped off during your build? What happened when something went wrong with a supplier---excuses and delays, or what? Did the contractor return phone calls immediately? What kind of builder-client software interface do they use? Can you, the client, show up at the build any time you want? How often does the contractor visit your build site? Is he/she there every single workday or just once every 2 weeks?

I'm asking you: what good will it do to know you're getting a better deal on the prefab trusses before you begin construction, when your GC (the lowest bidder), stops paying his subs and your jobsite is empty and no work is being done and the materials you already paid for/delivered are being stolen? Line item costs! This is the wrong thing to worry about.

In my experience, the traditional design-bid-build process works provided you can check all of the following boxes: 1.) You have a comprehensive set of plans and specifications detailing every aspect of the home. 2.) Local market conditions make the subset of contractors you would like to build the home interested in your project. 3.) All of the candidate contractors are willing to produce bids in the format and timeframe you dictate in exchange for the compensation you are offering them to do so. 4.) All of the candidate contractors are similar-sized businesses with similar overheads. 5.) All of the candidate contractors produce similar quality homes. 6.) All of the candidate contractors are able to construct the home in the timeframe you desire. 7.) You'll award the contract to the low bidder even if the cost exceeds your budget by a large margin. 8.) All of the candidate contractors are willing to work with you.

That's a lot of boxes to check. Typically, you won't be able to check them all and the bidding process takes a turn or two. And, typically, there will be some amount of re-design either to reduce the construction cost or to correct mistakes identified by the candidate builders or to incorporate ideas which make the plan better.

I believe the more you dictate the format for bids and the more detailed breakdown you require, the smaller your pool of interested and willing contractors will be

You are getting a building permit? Without already having established a cost estimate for the project?

For the level of detail you're requesting be prepared to pay consulting fees. Also, if you don't lay out some basic level of finishes you may be unpleasantly surprised as you make selections later on.

Better: find the best referred builders and get 3 bids, study these, ask questions.

This will be a 2-3 month process.

Where I used to live, building permits were taking 18+ months, so I can see why someone would get ahead of themselves and start that process before getting final bids.

To be sure, approval for building permit applications in some municipalities can take a year or more. The problem is that the OP has little confidence in the construction cost estimates prior to application for a permit. That speaks to a problem with the process.

"...the reason i broke ir down by room type is to have flexibility at later time and know what our Gc cost is vs other vendor if i decide to hire someone more specific to that area."

No GC in his right mind is going to go along with this idea. Not only is substituting your lower cost subs for his unfair, he's now surrendered his job to subs over which he has no control.

It's your money, but it's his job site. Were I your GC, no sub gets on my job over whom I have no control. Suppose you hire a cheaper drywaller. First, you've never hired him before, so you have no idea as to his reliability and quality, unlike mine. Which may be why mine costs more. Second, suppose your drywaller doesn't keep to the schedule for what ever reason. Now my kitchen cabinet installation is screwed along with the schedule of my kitchen cabinet sub (among others). You have no leverage over this renegade because your a onesie. I have no leverage over him because I didn't hire him and he's not one of my regulars.

Your decision to save a few bucks has brought the job to a screeching halt with no easy resolution. I've got enough frustration with jobs that run smoothly; no possible way would I enter into such an easily foreseeable mess. When you hire me, your sub shopping ends. Nonnegotiable.

Ok, i had enough advice here. no further feedback needed from anyone,

"Ok, i had enough advice here. no further feedback needed from anyone."

Jaya:

That's the beauty of this site. Posters don't get to pick the responses they get. While you may not know it yet, the most helpful are often those that you didn't want to hear.

Glad I could help.