Rehab Cost Estimator, weigh in

[James Hamling]

I am about to get new rehab/ construction cost estimator for 2012, would love to know what others are using, what it costs, what they love about it, what they hate about, and especially if there is any to recommend NOT using.

I will start off by saying I HATE exactimate. It is any thing but accurate. Sure, for stormchasers it may work great to beat subs into taking rates that end up just above minimum wage, but to prove how inaccurate it is one simply has to try to use it for windows. A 1 low ball price does not fit all. It is the standard of the insurance repair biz (no, I don't, I am retail and investment) that they get an exactimate, then spend a month and a dozen fillings trying to get correct billing. Well, I expect an estimating program to be, correct, not where I need to do dozens of supplements, that kind of defeats the entire point of a program to save time, when it costs me more.

Any opinions??????

[Jason S.]

Alright James fair enough - I'll stay out of Minnesota.
I know you want experienced people to chime in with their experience using an existing system - and I know that you know of dozens of existing software systems and I know you do not want to try all of these out (see, I read)..... but, since you mentioned free.... http://www.superbuild.com/productoverview.aspx?partner=homedepot is free and there is a free version sponsored by The Home Depot.

I did not know how many free systems you knew of, and I did not know how many were at least backed by large enough corporations whereas you could rely upon the software being supported and updated for any length of time.