Just secured my first job at .12 cents per sq ft on a 2,727 sq ft brick house. The customer also had a small porch that was concrete and a back patio that was concrete with a little wooden ramp and railing off it. So I didn’t know how to price so here was my pricing prior to securing the job.
Driveway 100-200$
Porch 75-150$
House .16 per sq ft
So we came into the deal saying 75$ for the porch, patio, and stair case. The house charged at 435$ (2,727 x .16 cents). The customer stated it was to high and we settled at 400$ for the job. How would you have priced it? Can you state your area?
Welcome to the forum. You won’t find much info on pricing here as everyone has different costs of operation and goals of profit they are trying to achieve.
The best advice I can give you, since you have already let the customer tell you how to price this job, would be to go do it and see how long it takes you and how much operation costs you have into it and determine if it’s worth it to you. If you feel you made bank then roll with it. If you feel like you lost your tail on it, well then you likely did.
What I have invested as a one-man show operating part-time is different than someone who has three trucks, six guys, workers comp, insurance on on those guys and vehicles, etc.
I hope you are successful in your first cleaning, learn lots from it, and then spend quite a bit of time reading and researching topics in this forum to help you hone in your cleaning skills.
I think you are on the right track. You obviously considered what it’s going to be worth for you to do it. We can’t answer if that’s a good price, as our situation and setup and area is different than yours.
I also am in a place where if they want to walk over $35 dollars than they are more than welcome to. I don’t think they was being cheap, I think they just wanted to feel like they got a better deal. For that I would change how I quote things not the pricing. For your example I would never mention that I calculated the porch separately. I would say $x for the house and $x for the driveway and we will throw in the porch while we are there. You get the price you wanted and they feel like they got the porch for free. I probably wouldn’t break it down on the estimate either unless asked to do so. I’d give them the total for everything and the “throw in the porch” line. My invoice is itemized tho.
