One of the most common questions I get from Moreton Bay families is some version of, "So what does this number actually include?" It's a fair question, and honestly, it's one that too many people are too embarrassed to ask, which is exactly how they end up with surprises down the track.
Before I built homes, I spent years in custom cabinetry and manufacturing, working with CNC machinery and design software to price and produce joinery down to the last detail. That background means I don't guess at numbers, I know what things actually cost to make and install, and that habit has carried straight through into how we quote homes at INH Moreton Bay.
Here's the plain English version of a few terms you'll come across.
An inclusions schedule is the list of everything that's going into your home, from tiles to taps to light fittings, along with the cost allocated to each. A quality builder will have this properly worked out, not just a vague square metre rate that means very little.
Not everything can be priced exactly at quoting stage, because you haven't chosen your tapware or tiles yet. That's where prime costs come in. A prime cost is an allowance set aside for an item you'll choose later, like a toilet suite or a light fitting. If what you pick costs more than the allowance, you pay the difference plus the builder's margin. If it costs less, you get the difference back. It's simply an educated placeholder, not a fixed price.
Provisional sums work a bit differently. These cover work where the actual cost genuinely can't be known until it's underway, things like site cut, unexpected rock, or underground services. A good builder will have enough experience to estimate these accurately from the start, which is exactly why choosing an experienced, honest home builder matters so much. The fewer provisional sums in your contract, and the more accurate they are, the fewer surprises you'll face later.
The best way to protect yourself is simple. Ask for the inclusions schedule up front, take it with you when you're choosing tiles, tapware and fittings, and keep an eye on how close your choices are tracking to the allowances you were given. If a builder's allowances look unrealistically low across the board, that's often a sign they were more focused on winning the job than being upfront with you.
At INH Moreton Bay, our aim is to keep prime costs and provisional sums to a minimum, and to make sure the ones we do include are realistic, not a way of making our initial quote look better than it actually is. Quality homes are built on honest numbers, not hopeful ones. If you'd like us to walk you through an inclusions schedule so you understand exactly what you're paying for, we're always happy to sit down and go through it line by line.
