Rental Property Investor · Midland, TX · Member since 2019 · 46 posts · 17 votes
We have a small 750sq ft single family home that we have completely renovated. Started getting quotes for paint and I was shocked!!!! This does include interior and exterior with trim. But still, $8000!!!!! How do y’all feel about this quote??? Any suggestions for getting the price down? Btw, the painting on the exterior is on newly installed siding, no scraping or sanding required.
Obviously that’s way too high for that small of a house. That’s a quote from a guy who doesn’t have time to do it, or doesn’t want to for some reason, but will if you pay that outrageously high number.
No point in trying to talk him down. Just get other quotes.
We had all the walls & ceilings of a 2bed/2.5 bath 1400 sq ft villa in FL painted for $600 but we supplied the paints & materials. One quote was $1975 but my BIL, (visiting from AZ), speaks fluent Spanish, so he found 3 guys @ Home Depot who did an excellent job. We still use one of their wives, as a cleaner, between tenants.
Hey Sean we recently did a remodel of a house in East TX and was $1500 for labor on about 1500 sq/ft. This included inside ceilings walls and trim although we didn’t do anything with the cabinets. I believe you are paying oil field price just like everything else in that part of Texas! Everything is higher in that part of TX because all of the money flowing in there rite now. I am sure contractors are just throwing numbers out there and seeing what people will pay. I would say find someone that does painting on the side and not and everyday job. You can still find people that are knowledgeable and good painters that don’t do it as a business or a living. Good luck to you.
@Anthony Rosa it was an complete gut and we changed the floor plan . New windows , cabinets front and back door and all interior doors. Cabinets brand new with tile backsplash , and don’t need to be painted. We also Spanish knife textured every interior wall except the closets and ceilings which had minimum patch work. I’m wanting everything primed with Killz 2 first then painted with Behr Ultra .
That is crazy pricing. Drive around newer subdivisions in your area and try to catch the builders painter at the jobsite. Or a rehab being done. If you talk to trades you liked they usually have someone they can refer. Sounds like you got quoted a retail price that a homeowner would be charged. Look for painters who can do a good job but works with flippers and landlords.
@Anthony Rosa it was an complete gut and we changed the floor plan . New windows , cabinets front and back door and all interior doors. Cabinets brand new with tile backsplash , and don’t need to be painted. We also Spanish knife textured every interior wall except the closets and ceilings which had minimum patch work. I’m wanting everything primed with Killz 2 first then painted with Behr Ultra .
That's a high price. He probably don't want the job.
Yes that does sound pretty high. I am a contractor myself and I have people tell me all the time that my price is too high! My construction company is definitely geared more towards the homeowner rather than the investor so I'm used to hearing that my price is too high. But I still have work booked up for the next couple months and at the end of every job I do I get more referrals for new work. So I pretty much stay consistent with work. I am in NJ but if I had a job like that in my area I would probably be around $6k.
Honestly coming from a contractor I wouldn't try to negotiate price. Like someone else said I would ask how they came up with that number and how long they think it will take them. I don't like when someone tries to negotiate with my number. I gave you my number because that is what I felt I needed to get the job done. I find it disrespectful for someone to negotiate my price by a large amount. This isn't a damaged piece of sheetrock or broke open box from home depot. This is a full job. I had an investor who respectfully declined my offer because it was too high. That to me is better than a counter. Like others have already said on this thread. Go get some more estimates. Call this guy back and tell him his number was too high for you. I agree with calling Sherwin Williams salesman and getting references. I use them for all my paint and they a
I accidently hit post but I was pretty much at the end anyway. Sherwin Williams is probably your best bet. You could always go on craigslist and post that you have painting work for $20/hr. Not sure if your able to be on site. YOu could list the work for weekends. But I've found some decent painters off craigslist for $20/hr. I had to make sure they used drop clothes and cleaned up their drips but that the cost of getting a discount. You can either pay top dollar for perfection or pay a lot less and have to baby sit. Ultimately your call.
Good Luck I Hope it all works out for you in a timely manner!
@Sean Tippens - I'd say theres a little more then alot of wiggle room. I have had over 300 house painted inside and out. In almost every major and sum sub markets in FL. I dont do the work and we only pay NET 30. sometimes even NET 90 this is usually unintentional. Never have I payed more the 2$ a SQFT. sometimes Less the a dollar. Take that for what it's worth.
@Sean Tippens labor does cost more in Midland than other areas but that does seem high. Keep getting quotes until you find a better contractor. That is the hard part about rehabbing here, it’s hard to find a good contractor. Good luck!
@Sean Tippens. Way too high. I have found painters who do side work. I got a 1400 sf house sprayed on the outside for $1000 and I bought the paint. Its a one or two day job, so $500 per day. I look for reasonable guys out there that drive the beater trucks. If they have 5 brand new company trucks, then you will pay the $8000. Lastly, I have a solo contractor I have hired since 2002, that now charges me $40 per hour. He can spray either interior or exterior in one day, assuming it is masked off well. Key to making money is finding best people for best price. Yes, thats hard but I have done it for years! I love T and M, time and materials. The key is honest and hard working people, not sketchy contractors.
As a DIY landlord, my big issue on any paint job as expensive as that wouldn't really be the money, it would be trust. I have houses that I would have willingly paid someone $8K to do. Interiors that were fully wallpapered on plaster, no paint, a hundred years ago. And then they were both repainted and re-wallpapered, multiple times over the decades. $4K for 750 ft2 of that? HAPPILY. But could I really trust anyone to painstakingly take off all the wallpaper and paint layers, clean and repair the old plaster, prime two coats with oil-based primer, and then paint? No, they'd find a way to shortchange me and compromise the final result, get paid and disappear.
In Europe, I once had to do a room where a tenant had the walls painted with pink powder paint, kalsomine, then spent twenty years working and chainsmoking in that room eight to ten hours a day. That tenant left and a new tenant came in, the owner was too busy to find someone to paint, so the new tenant had two guys she scraped off the street come in with the cheapest of no-name latex and throw a coat of beige up. The new tenant left, the owner moved in, and the owner conned her boyfriend, me, into fixing it.
Two years later, you could spray the latex the bums put up with water and it came off in long strips as you scraped it. I peeled down the whole room. Underneath the latex, the nicotine stains on the walls had run into long, dark nicotine streaks. Got sick cleaning that off in a country where TSP is not sold. Then a coat of styrene acrylic oil-based primer. I still remember how it stank (no respirators with organic vapor cartridges to be had). First and last time I used real mohair roller covers.
Then came scratch-coating with a cement-based interior fine plaster coating designed to smooth out the masonry walls. Then two more coats of the primer over the kalsomine. And then two coats of the best-quality paint I could find.
Yeah, I laid down a job that will last twenty years in that room. Could I have trusted someone else to do that work? Hell no.
I accidently hit post but I was pretty much at the end anyway. Sherwin Williams is probably your best bet. You could always go on craigslist and post that you have painting work for $20/hr. Not sure if your able to be on site. YOu could list the work for weekends. But I've found some decent painters off craigslist for $20/hr. I had to make sure they used drop clothes and cleaned up their drips but that the cost of getting a discount. You can either pay top dollar for perfection or pay a lot less and have to baby sit. Ultimately your call.
Good Luck I Hope it all works out for you in a timely manner!
I would be leery on hiring for a $/HR figure. Even if you are there with them, be prepared for that room to take a whole day if you pay by the hour. I had a painter do that once. Luckily I was on site and after the first day realized I was paying a premium for him to go slow. Probably took him an hour to tape off the baseboard trim.
You need to make sure they give you a full write up of exactly what they are doing. That doesn't sound right. Typically when they do a write up they either 1. realize they are charging too much and change the price; 2. do they write up and now you see why they are charging that high, maybe you are missing something; or 3. they don't do a write up at all because they didn't want you to question it. However there is something else missing here, you might want to check that out.
@Sean Tippens Just curious, if its only 750 sq ft, why not take an afternoon and paint it yourself? The paint and supplies won’t run more than a couple hundred bucks.
@Sean Tippens buy the paint yourself and pay someone by the hour. We have a 2100 sq.ft house and only paid $600 to the painter, trim painted included. We paid around $500 for the paint.