At a glance
- A real builder’s quote ties a scope to the drawings, names the actual selections, prices the work line by line, and attaches a schedule and payment terms.
- A quote and an estimate are different documents in BC: an estimate firms up in stages, while a quote is a precise promise of the cost, binding once accepted.
- Allowances and cash allowances are where a fixed-looking number moves. Canadian construction lawyers warn that enough of them can quietly turn a fixed-price contract into a cost-plus arrangement.
- The exclusions list is real money either way. In Revelstoke, the building permit alone runs about $11,126 on a $1 million build, and development cost charges are calculated on every square metre of usable floor space, with garages and open decks excluded.
- Two quotes can only be compared line by line against the same scope and selections; the cheaper one is usually the one with more blanks in it.
There is a document on your kitchen table with a builder’s logo at the top and a number near the bottom, and you are trying to work out what that number is worth. This guide walks through how to read a builder’s quote before you sign it: what the document should contain, where the price can move after you commit, and how to line two competing quotes up honestly. If you have been researching for a while, you already have a sense of what it costs to build a house in BC. The harder question is what the specific number in front of you includes, what it quietly leaves out, and how firmly the builder is promising it.
When you build a custom home at this budget level, the quote is the single most consequential document you will sign. Read it well and you know exactly what you are buying. Read it quickly and you may be agreeing to a number that was never really fixed at all.
What a custom home builder’s quote should include
A quote you can rely on has four parts, and the price is only the last of them.
The first is scope. The quote should describe exactly what is being built, and it should be tied to the drawings. BC Housing’s consumer guidance on hiring a builder recommends that the design plans be incorporated into the contract itself, so the documents you fell in love with are the same documents the price is based on. If the quote references “the plans” loosely, ask which revision, dated when.
The second is selections. The Canadian Home Builders’ Association is specific here: a price quote should name the materials and products to be used, including brand names and model numbers, along with the labour and sub-trades required and the cost of each item. A quote that says “engineered hardwood flooring” is naming a category, while one that names the product line, the grade and the installed price is making a commitment.
The third is coverage. BC Housing's guidance sets out what a complete estimate accounts for: pre-construction, construction and interior work, covering materials, labour, equipment, taxes, professional services such as engineering, and an amount for contingencies. Pre-construction alone covers site preparation, surveying, excavation, permits, and connecting to power, water and sewer, exactly the money that tends to vanish from a thin quote. Read that as a coverage checklist rather than a demand for a price column, because builders present the same information differently. Some itemize by phase and show a cost against each one. A fixed-price, lump-sum builder gives you a single number, because the detail sits in the agreed specifications and selections rather than in a breakdown of the price. Neither approach is a warning sign by itself. What matters is that you can take that list, point to every item on it, and get a clear answer on whether it is inside the number. Straight Up Construction works the second way, pricing from the completed design and full selections and quoting one amount, with the specifications behind it defining what is included.
The fourth is time and payment: a schedule for the build and a schedule for the money. In Revelstoke, design typically runs 6 to 9 months, permit processing takes 6 to 8 weeks, and construction runs 9 to 12 months, and all of these can be longer for bigger, more complicated homes. A quote with no dates attached is leaving out something you will care about.
BC Housing puts the overall standard bluntly: one-page quotes do not provide enough information to make an informed decision. If the document in your hands is short, that is your first finding.
Quote or estimate: the difference decides what your number is worth
The word at the top of the document matters, because in BC the two words carry different weight.
An estimate is an approximation, expected to firm up in stages. BC Housing describes the normal sequence: builders give a rough estimate first, a more detailed estimate once they have building plans, and a final estimate once the building permit has been issued. An early estimate is a planning tool, not a promise.
A quote is different. Construction lawyers in BC describe it as a precise promise of the cost, binding once accepted, with narrow exceptions for genuinely unforeseeable circumstances. Even an estimate is not infinitely flexible, since courts have held that an estimate can set a limit beyond which fees may not go. The practical rule for a buyer is simple: ask the builder to confirm in writing whether the document is a firm quote or a preliminary estimate, before any money moves.
Then look at what stands behind the label. A real fixed number rests on a complete design and finished selections, the structure behind the industry-standard stipulated price contract used across Canada. And whether the document is built on a fixed-price or a cost-plus contract changes who pays when reality moves. We have compared those two structures in full elsewhere; for reading the document, what matters is knowing which kind of paper you are holding, because everything else in it flows from that.
How to read allowances in a builder's quote
Now read the quote line by line, because this is where a fixed-looking number hides its moving parts.
An allowance is a lump sum in the contract price set aside for an item you have not chosen yet, such as flooring, fixtures, cabinets or lighting. On the page it looks like any other line, a category and a dollar figure, but the figure is a guess rather than a price, which is what makes it so easy to read past. The mechanics are plain in the CHBA’s definition: you select the item, and if your selection costs more than the amount set aside, you cover the difference through a change order signed by both parties. Allowances are the main reason custom home builds go over budget in BC, and on the quote they look harmless.
The same idea appears in Canadian standard-form contracts as a cash allowance: an amount the builder expects to spend on something that cannot be priced precisely yet. If the actual cost comes in above the estimated amount, the owner pays the difference, and if it comes in below, the contractor credits the owner. The mechanism is symmetrical on paper. In practice, the overages are what buyers remember.
The sharpest warning on this comes from Canadian construction lawyers, who caution that enough of these clauses can transform a fixed-price contract into a cost-plus arrangement, leaving the owner responsible for significant sums beyond the stipulated price. It means the words "fixed price" on page one can be undone by the allowance lines further in.
So here is the reading exercise. Mark every line that says allowance, cash allowance or provisional, and add them up. That total is the soft part of your number, the portion that is estimated rather than promised. A handful of small allowances is normal. A quote where a large share of the total sits in placeholder lines is not a fixed price at all, whatever the heading says.
The exclusions list: what “not included” costs in Revelstoke
Every quote has a boundary, usually stated in an exclusions section, the list of things the price does not cover. Read it as carefully as the price itself, because nothing on that list disappears. An excluded cost has simply moved onto your side of the table.
Some exclusions are standard. Permits and government charges are sometimes carried by the owner, and the quote should say plainly which side of the table they sit on, because in Revelstoke they are large, knowable numbers that should never be vague. The building permit fee for a single-family home here is a $126.00 base fee plus $11.00 per $1,000 of construction value under the City’s current fees and charges bylaw, so a $1 million build carries about $11,126 in permit fees before a shovel touches the ground. The full process is covered in our guide to building permits in Revelstoke; on the quote, what matters is one line: who is paying this, and has anyone written the real figure down.
Development cost charges are bigger still, and they scale with the size of the home. Under the City’s DCC bylaw in effect since August 1, 2025, residential development in the primary city area pays $162.39 per square metre of usable floor space, measured on the living area, with attached garages and open decks excluded. On 2,000 square feet of living space that is roughly $30,173, and the number climbs with every square metre you add. BC Housing notes that owners often underestimate permits and regulatory fees, a habit that feeds cost overruns.
Then come the quieter omissions: site preparation, excavation, utility connections, landscaping, appliances and GST. None of these are exotic, and a builder who works here can price or bracket every one of them. The test of an exclusions list is not whether it exists but whether each excluded item is named, so you can build your real total, rather than trailing off with “and anything not expressly included,” which is a boundary drawn in fog.
Contingency, holdbacks and the payment schedule
Three more parts of the document deserve a slower read, because each one is about how the money actually moves.
Start with contingency. BC Housing recommends a contingency fund of 10 to 20 percent of the total project budget, for good reason: without a reserve, an unexpected cost forces you to choose between scaling back the plan or overextending your finances. Check whether the quote carries a contingency line and whether it lives in the builder’s number or in yours. A quote that reached a lower total by deleting the contingency has not made the risk smaller, only harder to see.
Then comes the holdback, the line buyers most often puzzle over. Under BC’s Builders Lien Act, each party paying out on a construction project must hold back 10 percent of the amount owing until the work is substantially complete and the holdback period has expired, protecting the property against liens from unpaid subcontractors or suppliers. A payment schedule showing 10 percent retained is not the builder being difficult; it is the law working as designed, and a quote that spells it out is a good sign the builder papers their projects properly.
Last, read the draw schedule itself, the list of payments tied to construction milestones. If you are financing the build, your lender will fund it in draws, with an inspection before each disbursement, and the builder will often be paying trades ahead of the next draw arriving. Read the quote’s payment schedule against your lender’s draw schedule and make sure the two can live together. A mismatch here does not change the price of the home, but it decides how smoothly the money flows.
How to compare two builder quotes apples to apples
Most buyers eventually end up with two quotes on the table and a gap between the totals, and the natural instinct is to ask why one builder is so much more expensive. The better question is what the cheaper document left out.
The CHBA’s rule for comparing bids is disarmingly simple: make sure all the builders bidding the job are pricing the same services and materials. That means you cannot compare totals until you have normalized everything above: same drawings, same selections at the same specification, allowances totalled on both, exclusion lists set side by side. Tens of thousands of dollars of apparent savings can dissolve once both documents describe the same house. The quote with more blanks is not cheaper, only less finished, and the difference gets paid later, usually with less negotiating power than you have today. BC Housing’s caution belongs here too: the lowest price is not always the best option.
While the documents are side by side, verify the people behind them. Every licensed residential builder in BC appears on the Public Registry of Licensed Residential Builders, searchable by company name, licence number or location. Confirm the name on the quote matches the name on the licence, the licence is in good standing, and it carries the general contractor licence type, the only licence type that allows a builder to construct a custom home for you. Ask each builder for a WorkSafeBC clearance letter as well; it confirms the contractor is registered and paying premiums, and without one the person who hires can be held jointly liable for the contractor’s unpaid premiums. Then fold these checks into the broader list of questions to ask a Revelstoke builder before you sign.
The bottom line
A builder's quote rewards a slow read. The scope tells you what is being built, the selections tell you how precisely it has been imagined, the allowances tell you how much of the number is still a guess, the exclusions tell you what you will pay on top, and the schedule tells you whether anyone has thought about time and money together. Read those five things and you will understand the document better than most people who have already signed one, and you will walk into the next conversation with your builder knowing which questions still need answers.
All of it points to one conclusion. The only number you can truly hold a builder to is a fixed-price, lump-sum quote prepared after the design is complete and every selection has been made. That is the model Straight Up Construction offers. The design phase settles every selection first, starting in the $50,000 to $70,000 range with the final number depending on the size and complexity of the home, and then we quote one solid build cost with no allowance lines waiting to move it. If costs shift underneath that number, that is our risk to carry, not yours. If you are holding a quote right now, ours or anyone else’s, and you would like a second set of eyes on it, we are glad to walk through it with you.
Frequently asked questions
Is a builder’s quote legally binding in BC?
Construction lawyers in BC describe a quote as a precise promise of the cost, binding once accepted, with narrow exceptions for genuinely unforeseeable circumstances. An estimate is more flexible, although courts have held that even an estimate can set a limit beyond which fees may not go. Ask the builder to confirm in writing whether the document you are holding is a firm quote or a preliminary estimate before any work starts.
What should a custom home builder’s quote include?
It should specify the materials and products to be used, including brand names and model numbers, the labour and sub-trades required, and the cost of each item, all tied to design plans that are incorporated into the contract. It should also carry a construction schedule and a payment schedule. BC Housing is blunt that one-page quotes do not provide enough information to make an informed decision.
What is a cash allowance in a building quote?
A cash allowance is an amount set aside in the contract price for an item that cannot be priced precisely yet, and it is the standard mechanism in CCDC 2 contracts. If the actual cost comes in higher, you pay the difference, and if it comes in lower, you are credited. Older and British-influenced contracts call the same thing a prime cost sum. Canadian construction lawyers warn that enough of these clauses can quietly transform a fixed-price contract into a cost-plus arrangement, which is why a quote full of them is not really fixed.
How much contingency should I budget for a custom home in BC?
BC Housing recommends a contingency fund of 10 to 20 percent of the total project budget for unexpected costs or changes. Without one, an overage forces you to choose between scaling back the plan or overextending your finances. A fixed-price quote with selections already made shrinks what the contingency has to absorb, but it does not replace it.
Why is one builder’s quote so much cheaper than the other?
Usually because the two documents are not pricing the same build. The CHBA’s rule for comparing bids is to make sure every builder is pricing the same services and materials, and differences in allowances, exclusions and selections can hide tens of thousands of dollars of scope. Line the quotes up item by item before comparing totals, and remember BC Housing’s caution that the lowest price is not always the best option.
