--- title: "The Difference Between an Estimate and a Number You Can Hold Us To" date: 2026-08-06 author: "shawn" url: https://foleyconstruction.net/how-do-design-build-builders-price-a-remodel-or-custom-home/ description: "Wondering why one basement quote reads $70,000 and another reads $120,000? Learn what a real allowance looks like and how to read the scope behind any number." categories: - "General Knowledge" --- # The Difference Between an Estimate and a Number You Can Hold Us To ![grisius-home-building-large-yellow-house](https://foleyconstruction.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/grisius-home-building-large-yellow-house.webp) ## Before the Sledgehammer, the Spec Sheet Why does one builder quote your basement at $70,000 while the next one quotes it at $120,000? And how are you supposed to tell which number is real, or whether [the license behind it checks out](https://foleyconstruction.net./how-to-verify-contractor-license/), before you've handed over a deposit? In this post, you'll learn how our pricing actually works: what the on-site consultation covers, what the paid design phase produces, what a [turnkey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turnkey) contract binds us to, why our starting prices sit on the website, and how change orders keep your number from drifting. ## How Do Design-Build Builders Price Remodels or Custom Homes? Design-build builders price a remodel or custom home in two stages: a paid design phase that produces a detailed set of specifications, followed by a fixed turnkey construction contract based on those specifications. With [Foley Construction](https://foleyconstruction.net./), design runs 6 to 8 percent of total project cost, and the contract that comes out of it is a committed price for the work as drawn, not an estimate you'll be renegotiating later. ## How Foley Prices a Remodel or Custom Home from Day One Pricing starts with your budget, not our number. On the qualifying phone call, we ask two things: what do you want, and what do you have to spend? If those two don't marry up, we say so on that call instead of six weeks into a design. Then, an on-site consultation at your home for $350. Then a [professional services agreement](https://foleyconstruction.net./pre-construction-services-agreement/), which is the paid design phase. An estimate is a guess with a dollar sign in front of it, and a guess is exactly what falls apart the week demolition starts. What you're buying first is the work of figuring out what your project really costs. You can stop that work at any point along the way. Signing a design agreement does not lock you into building, and plenty of Purcellville homeowners use the design phase to decide whether the project is worth doing at all. ## What the Paid Design Phase Buys before Construction Starts You walk out of the design phase with a detailed set of specifications and a turnkey construction price. The drawings come with 2D renderings from SoftPlan, one set of revisions included, and additional revisions available for purchase. That second document is the one an architect can't hand you. An architect gives you drawings. Good drawings sometimes. Nothing in terms of a detailed set of specifications, and no price attached to any of it. So you carry those drawings out to builders, each one fills in the missing specifications differently, and now you're [comparing contractors](https://foleyconstruction.net./how-to-choose-a-bathroom-remodeling-contractor-purcellville-va/) on numbers that were never describing the same house. We draw, and we price in the same office with the same process. ### A Detailed Set of Specifications A specification set is the written list of what actually goes into the job: flooring, tile, plumbing fixtures, countertops, cabinets, lighting, down to the line item. Where you haven't picked something yet, it gets an allowance instead of a blank. An allowance has to be a real number, priced against the cost of materials in that category. A $30,000 cabinet allowance means we priced $30,000 worth of cabinets, not that we picked a round figure to make the bottom line look friendly. That's the gap between a quote you can [build a budget around](https://foleyconstruction.net./budgeting-small-bathroom-remodel-purcellville-va/) and a quote you'll be arguing about in March. ### How Fast Does the Design Work Move We normally start design inside the first week. Design and costing work typically wraps in under three months, and simpler projects can be finished in a couple of weeks; if your project needs civil engineering for land development, add time for that. Land development is its own line item in [the cost to build a home](https://foleyconstruction.net./how-much-does-it-cost-to-build-a-home/), and it's the one most builders either bury in an allowance or push onto the homeowner to handle separately. We give you a fixed price for it. On a typical one to two-acre lot in Northern Virginia, the excavation, clearing, septic, utility connections, driveway, engineering, and permits have run $60,000 to $150,000. ## What a Turnkey, Fixed-Price Contract Actually Locks In A turnkey contract locks the price for building exactly what the drawings and specifications describe. A number we are bound to, and if we price it wrong, we eat it. That is only possible because the company that wrote your specifications is the same company signing the price, and because we use the same plumber and the same framer we've used for years, rather than three-bidding every trade to whoever came in lowest that month. Cost-plus runs the other direction. You pay whatever it ends up costing, plus our markup, leaving the whole budget up in the air and giving the builder no reason to hold anything down. We don't do it. Two things can still move a turnkey number, and both of them are physical. Open a wall in an older Ashburn house and find rot or mold behind the drywall, and that's real work nobody could have seen from a site visit. On a new build, poor soils or rock in the excavation does the same thing. Every builder carries contract language for those conditions. Everything else is settled before a tool comes out of the truck. The contract carries a start date and a finish date, plus a one-year labor and materials warranty. ## Why Foley Publishes Starting Prices Most Builders Keep Vague Because you deserve to know whether we're anywhere near your range before you spend $350 and a Saturday morning finding out. And because a low number with nothing listed underneath it isn't a price. We have watched a homeowner bring in a finished basement quote at $70,000 against ours at $120,000, with not one item spelled out on the cheap one. Ask what you actually get for that $70,000, and you learn whether it's five-dollar-a-square-foot flooring or fifty-cent tile. So our starting numbers sit on the site with the scope attached: - A 5×8 secondary bathroom starts at $29,000 and goes up to $35,000, and is finished in 5 to 11 business days. - A master bathroom starts at $75,000 and up, with the frameless shower door, the niche and bench, and granite or quartz countertops, finished in 10 to 15 business days. - A standard kitchen, where we paint your existing cabinets and replace countertops, lighting, plumbing fixtures, and backsplash, starts at $55,000. - A premium kitchen with a layout reconfiguration and high-grade quartz starts at $100,000 and up. - A whole-home renovation for a 2,000-square-foot house starts at $150,000, and the premium version, which includes an addition, starts at $400,000. - A 2,500-square-foot custom home starts at $325 per square foot and takes about six months. Our custom homes have ranged from $400,000 to over $3 million, and across Loudoun County, that spread comes down to size and complexity more than anything else, with the level of finishing pushing it further. ## How Foley's Change-Order Policy Protects Your Number Every selection you make becomes a written change order, priced to the dollar, before you commit. That's the whole protection. You know exactly what you're paying for before you pay for it. Say your cabinet allowance is $30,000, and the cabinets you fall for come to $38,000. The change order shows the $8,000 and what changed; you sign it, or you don't. We charge nothing to write one. Two hundred change orders on a job costs you nothing extra. We also don't mark up the difference. If a $12,000 plumbing allowance turns into $32,000 once you've picked your fixtures, you pay the $20,000 gap at cost, with no overhead and profit stacked on top. Change your mind as often as you want, right up until we place the order. That's what custom means. ## Stop Comparing Guesses and Get a Contract From Foley Construction The number you can actually plan around is the one that comes with a written list of its contents. Everything else is somebody's guess. If you'd like a real specification set and a turnkey price for your project, [fill out our contact form](https://foleyconstruction.net./contact-us/) or give us a call today.