Have just started a landscape garden company but not sure how to price the jobs?
Question:Any ideas how to price jobs for landscaping and should I target large houses in well to do areas. Any advice would be much appreciated.
Answers:
My first thought is do you have any landscape or horticulture experience? The big thing is to find what your overhead is along with all of your other expenses. You need to find out how much it costs you per hour per piece of equipment your using. You need to figure out your skill level and your employees skill level to determine how many hours it takes to do different tasks. There are also books you can purchase to help you figure out how much time each tasks will take. I recently graduated from a landscape program at a technical college and I had an estimating class that helped with that. As for what to target when you are first starting out take just about any job you can get your hands on. If you limit your target market to a certain house size you rfeally limit your market. I would also look at not just limiting your market to new construction or just renovation work. These are just a few things I learned at school. The books you may want to purchase are Labor &Equipment Production Times for Landscape Contractors by Charles Vander Kooi, the other book is Landscape Estimating and Contract Administration. As for an actual per hour rate it depends on the area of the country you live in. Another thing you may want to consider is giving a bid instead of charging the customer a flat hourly rate. Some contractors just base their labor costs from a percentage of their material costs but this isn't the best way. I hope this helps. Good luck, I will be starting my own design/ build firm in a few years.
you could always find out what the other local companies charge .. also try and canvass houses that are up for sale as they need a nice garden in order to secure sales
Now a days I would charge about 50.00 per hour. Back in the 80s when I had my business I charged 25 per hour. Gas costs much more now. That should be an average for lawn maint. For landscaping your basic cost should be at least double your materials.
Ring up different companies asking them for a quote on certain jobs...then you'll have an idea of how much to charge,,,you haven't done much Market Research have you,,,why don't you delay for a few weeks and do some...you should also get a business plan together.
Sit down and work out all your costs over a period (a week or month).
Telephone, fuel, clothing, safety gear, servicing costs for machinery and replacement tools, other labour costs, costs and delivery charges for materials, wages for staff, national insurance, other insurance, your expences, your wages, 25% profit margin(at least) and you should have some idea of the total. Divide by the number of hours you intend to work and add another 10% and you should be about right.
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