15 Questions to Ask a Builder Before You Sign

Most people ask about price and start date. Those matter least. Here are the questions that tell you something.

Licensing and insurance

1. What is your licence number, and what class is it? You can verify it on the NSW Fair Trading website in about a minute. Do it. Check the name on the licence matches the entity on your contract.

2. Do you hold current public liability insurance, and for how much? Ask to see the certificate of currency. Twenty million is typical.

3. Will you be arranging Home Building Compensation Fund cover? Required in NSW for residential work over $20,000. The certificate must be provided before work starts and before you pay a deposit.

The work itself

4. Have you done this specific type of job before? Can I see one? A builder who does new homes is not automatically good at second-storey additions. They are different disciplines.

5. Who will actually be on site, and who runs the job? Find out whether the person quoting is the person managing it. Ask how many other jobs they will be running at the same time.

6. Are your subcontractors regular or whoever is available? Consistent trades who know how a builder works produce better results.

7. What do you expect to find that we cannot see yet? On a renovation, a builder who says nothing has not thought about it. A good one will list the likely surprises for a house of that age.

Money

8. Is this quote fixed price or an estimate? There is an enormous difference and the word “quote” is used loosely.

9. What are the provisional sums, and how did you arrive at them? This is where quotes diverge most. Go through them line by line.

10. What is not included? Often more revealing than what is.

11. What is the payment schedule? It should follow completed stages. In NSW the maximum deposit on work over $20,000 is 5%. Anyone asking for more is either uninformed or worse.

12. How are variations priced and approved? You want written variations approved before work proceeds, not a bill at the end.

Time

13. Can I see a written program? It should show stages and durations. It makes slippage visible.

14. What is your current workload and when would you actually start? An honest answer might be ten weeks away. A builder who says next week when they clearly have three jobs running is telling you something.

Afterwards

15. What happens if something goes wrong in two years? In NSW, statutory warranties are six years for major defects and two years for other defects on residential work. Ask how they handle defect callbacks and whether you can speak to a past client about it.

What good answers sound like

Specific, unhesitating and occasionally uncomfortable. A good builder will tell you what they do not know, will flag risks rather than glossing over them, and will occasionally tell you that what you want is a bad idea.

Warning signs

• Reluctance to give a licence number
• No written quote, or a single lump figure with no breakdown
• A deposit above 5%
• Pressure to sign quickly or a discount that expires
• Cash-only arrangements
• No fixed address or a business registered very recently
• Every answer is yes, including to things that should give a builder pause

The one that matters most

Ask to speak to a client from a job that had a problem. Every builder has had one. How they handled it tells you far more than a list of happy references.

We are happy to answer all of these, and we will give you our licence details, insurance certificates and a written itemised quote before you commit to anything.