The SecondEye Blog

Field notes on contractor bids.

Real bid teardowns and real cost data, pulled from a St. Louis rehab invoice archive. The point is simple: to know whether a number is fair, you have to measure it against something real. Here's the something real.

Bid Teardown · Roofing

Why the same flat roof got quoted $9,120 and $21,116

One roof. Four roofers. Same three sections, same week — and a 2.3× spread. Almost none of that $12,000 gap is one guy overcharging. Here's the line-by-line of what's actually going on.

Read the teardown →

Also in the works

The $1,200-vs-$17,000 plumbing quote — one job, three plumbers, a 14× spread hiding in the scope.
What a panel upgrade actually costs in St. Louis — the real range from 122 electrical bids.
The lump-sum bid is the red flag — not the high one — why a bid you can't read is a bid you can't negotiate.