Short answer: divide the quote by the floor area and see where that number lands. If it sits below the band for your building type and finish, the money has to come from somewhere — and it is almost never the contractor's profit. It is scope. The checker below shows you where your quote sits and, more usefully, names the line items a quote at that price has probably left out.
"Please send me your list of exclusions." An honest contractor has one ready. The differences between three bidders' exclusion lists explain almost the entire price spread — far better than the totals do.
Because without a bill of quantities, the three contractors are not pricing the same house. They are each pricing their own assumption of the house.
One assumes a 100mm slab, another 125mm. One prices 10mm bars at 200mm spacing, another 12mm at 150mm. One includes the septic tank, another does not. One carries the permit fees, another expects you to. None of those assumptions appears anywhere in a lump-sum quote, so the owner compares three numbers that describe three different buildings and picks the smallest.
The uncomfortable part: the cheapest quote is very often the most accurate quote of a smaller scope. Nobody lied. The scope was never fixed, so each bidder narrowed it to whatever made their number competitive.
Puts your quote's implied cost per square metre against the current band for that building type and finish, then lists what a quote at that level has most likely excluded — and what the real all-in figure looks like once those are added back.
Does the quote explicitly include these?
These are in the order we most often find them missing. Any one of them moves a residential budget by 5–15%. A quote that omits all seven can look a quarter cheaper than an honest one describing exactly the same house.
| Line item | Typical add | Why it gets left out |
|---|---|---|
| Design & sealed plans | 5–9% | The contractor assumes you already have them, or will "provide plans" that nobody licensed has sealed. You cannot file a permit without sealed plans. |
| Permit & ancillary fees | 1–3% | Genuinely small, but the assumption is usually "owner's account". Worth confirming rather than discovering. |
| Full MEPFS | 6–12% | "Rough-ins only" is a legitimate scope — it just isn't a finished building. The fixtures, panels and testing are a separate spend. |
| Site works | 3–10% | Fill, compaction, retaining, drainage. Impossible to price honestly without knowing the soil — which is why the boring test pays for itself. |
| Fixtures & joinery | 5–12% | Often a provisional sum with no specification, so the allowance is whatever makes the total look good. |
| Contingency | 5–10% | Contractors leave it out because it makes them look expensive. It gets spent regardless — just from your pocket, later. |
| VAT | 12% | Sometimes a genuine oversight, sometimes a deliberate way to be lowest. Ask directly whether the figure is VAT-inclusive. |
The Pattern That Actually Hurts Owners
It is rarely outright fraud. It is sequencing. A low quote wins the job. Construction starts. Then the variation orders arrive — for the site works nobody priced, the fixtures that were a provisional sum, the MEPFS that was only rough-ins.
By then you have no leverage. Your money is in the ground, the alternative is a half-built house and a new contractor who will charge a premium to inherit someone else's work, and the variations are priced without competition because there is no agreed rate to argue from. The moment to fix this is before signing, and the tool that fixes it is an itemised bill of quantities.
The full hiring checklist — licence checks, contract terms, payment structure — is in our guide to choosing a contractor in the Philippines. If you are doing this from overseas, the remote owner's playbook covers releasing money against verified milestones instead of dates.
Not the cheapest. Not the most detailed-looking. A fair quote is one where the price and the scope are consistent with each other, and you can prove it because both are written down.
The per-square-metre bands are AEDO 2026 planning ranges and match the figures published in our house, commercial, warehouse, fit-out and renovation cost guides. They are market estimates for judgement, not quotations. The percentages used to value missing items are planning allowances drawn from the same guides, not your contractor's numbers. This page cannot tell you whether a contractor is honest — it tells you whether a price and a scope are consistent, which is the question you can actually answer before signing.
How do I know if a contractor's quote is too low?
Divide the quote by the floor area and compare the result against the current per-square-metre band for that building type and finish level. A house quoted below about 20,000 pesos per square metre is below the economy band for 2026, and the gap has to come from somewhere: thinner slabs, fewer or smaller reinforcing bars, cheaper roofing gauge, or work that is simply not in the scope and will return later as a variation order. A low number is not automatically dishonest. It is almost always a narrower scope, and the only way to know which is to compare itemised quantities rather than totals.
What is usually excluded from a cheap construction quote?
In order of how often we see them missing: professional design fees and signed and sealed plans, government permit and ancillary permit fees, MEPFS works beyond basic rough-ins, contingency, VAT, site works such as fill, compaction and retaining, fixtures and fittings, and the connection charges for electricity and water. Any one of those can move a residential budget by five to fifteen percent, and a quote that omits all of them can look twenty-five percent cheaper than one that includes them while describing exactly the same house.
Why do three contractors give three completely different prices for the same house?
Because without a bill of quantities they are not pricing the same house. Each one makes their own assumptions about slab thickness, rebar sizes and spacing, concrete class, roofing gauge, tile grade and how much of the MEPFS scope is theirs. Those assumptions never appear in a lump-sum quote. Issue every bidder the same itemised bill of quantities and the spread between honest bidders usually collapses to under ten percent, because they are finally pricing identical work.
Should I always choose the lowest construction quote?
Only if you have confirmed it covers the same scope as the others, which usually means the lowest quote is the one that excluded the most. The pattern that hurts owners is a low quote accepted early, followed by variation orders for everything the quote never included, with the owner in a weak negotiating position because construction has already started and changing contractor mid-build is expensive. Compare exclusions, not totals.
What documents should I ask a contractor for before signing?
A priced bill of quantities rather than a lump sum, a written list of exclusions, the PCAB licence with its category and size range, structural plans signed and sealed by a PRC-licensed civil engineer, a materials specification naming concrete class, rebar grade and roofing gauge, and a contract stating the payment schedule, retention and defects liability period. If a contractor will not produce a priced bill of quantities, you cannot compare their price to anyone else's and you cannot fairly value a change later.
Is a per-square-metre figure a reliable way to price construction?
It is a sanity check, not an estimate. Cost per square metre is a useful way to spot a quote that is far outside the normal range, and a useless way to arrive at a contract price, because it hides every decision that actually drives cost: column grid, number of storeys, span lengths, soil conditions, finish selections and site access. Use it the way this page uses it, to raise questions, then settle them with a take-off from real drawings.
An itemised BOQ and cost breakdown taken off your drawings: the document that makes every bidder price the same list, so you compare like with like instead of guessing which quote padded what — or left what out.