Home Repair Estimate Template for Room-by-Room Repair Lists

• Contractor and estimate details: your business name, address and contact details, and your license number if your state requires one. Then the estimate number, the date, a "Valid until" date and who prepared it.
• Client and property: the client's name and phone or email, the property address, a short description of the property, and the walk-through date. The sample's description is "Two-story house, occupied".
• Fixed-price items: one line per repair, with columns for location or room, task, materials included, quantity, price and amount, and a fixed-price items subtotal. The price for each item covers the labor and the materials listed for it.
• Hourly labor: tasks whose time you can't pin down, priced as hours × rate, with an hourly labor subtotal.
• Totals: subtotal, a trip and disposal fee, "Sales tax, if applicable", the estimated total and a proposed deposit to schedule the work.
• Notes: "Exclusions", "Access" and "Pricing".
• Acceptance: client signature, print name and date.

The sample has eight fixed-price repairs across the kitchen, hall bath, living room, bedrooms, exterior and deck, plus two hourly tasks: clearing the gutters and adjusting the garage door tracks.

The template prices work two ways, and the "Pricing" note on the estimate explains both to the client:

• Fixed-price items are for repairs you can size up from the walk-through. The price covers the labor and the materials listed on the line. Where the same task repeats, use the quantity column, as the sample does for three drywall patches at 55.00 each.
• Hourly labor is for open-ended work where the time depends on what you find, such as flushing every gutter on the house. Enter the hours you expect and your rate. The sample note says hourly items "are charged for the time actually spent; the hours shown are our expectation". If you'll cap the hours or check in before going over, add that to the note.

Small jobs carry hidden time: driving there, setting up, protecting floors, hauling away debris. The template puts this on one line, "Trip and disposal fee", instead of spreading it across the items. That way the client understands why a short list still costs what it does. If the client may drop items, decide in advance whether the fee still applies and say so.

Tax. Whether sales tax applies to repair materials, labor or both depends on where you work. Check with your state or local tax agency before filling in the "Sales tax, if applicable" line. The template starts it at 0%.

Proposed deposit. The amount you'd ask for to schedule the work, if any. It's a proposal at this stage, not a payment received, and it isn't added to the total. The 20% in the sample is only a placeholder. Check your state's rules for home repair and home improvement work before you set a deposit figure.

Small jobs go wrong over things nobody wrote down. The template has two notes for this.

Exclusions. List what you saw but aren't doing, and anything the client might assume is included:

• Work for another trade. The sample excludes electrical, roofing and plumbing work other than the faucet cartridge.
• Hidden damage, and how it will be handled if you find it.
• Matching. Say whether new paint, grout, trim or flooring will match the existing finish. The sample warns that patches are painted with the client's leftover paint, so the match may not be exact.
• Permits. Check with the local building department, or the rules where the job is, whether any repair on the list needs a permit. Say whether any permit and its fee are included or are the client's responsibility.

Access. In an occupied home, say what you need from the client and what they should expect:

• Your working hours
• Clearing the work areas and keeping pets away from them
• Any time the water or power will be off. The sample warns that the hall bath water will be off for about two hours.
• Parking, ladders and anything else that affects the outside of the house

In the US, if the home was built before 1978, the EPA's lead Renovation, Repair and Painting rule can apply to paid work that disturbs paint. EPA lists covered activities including remodeling and repair/maintenance, electrical work, plumbing, painting preparation, carpentry and window replacement, and says firms doing that work must be certified. Minor repair and maintenance that disturbs six square feet or less of paint per room inside, or 20 square feet or less outside, isn't covered. Window replacement and demolition of painted surfaces are always covered regardless of square footage. Check EPA's page for the full rule before pricing work in an older home.

If you agree the job with the client in their home, check whether any cancellation rights apply. In the US, the FTC's Cooling-Off Rule gives buyers three days to cancel certain sales made at their home. It has exceptions, including emergencies and repairs or maintenance on the buyer's personal property that they asked the seller to come to their home to do. Your state may have its own home solicitation or home improvement contract rules too, so check those before you set a deposit or start date.

No fixed rule applies. Set a "Valid until" date that matches how quickly your material prices and schedule change. The sample uses 30 days as a placeholder. If the client accepts after that date, or the list has changed, reissue the estimate rather than editing the old one by hand.

1. Add your business details (and license number, if your state requires one), the estimate number, the date and the "Valid until" date.
2. Enter the client, the property address, a short description of the property and the walk-through date.
3. List each fixed-price repair with its location or room, the task, the materials included, the quantity and the price. Put open-ended tasks under hourly labor with the expected hours and your rate.
4. Enter the trip and disposal fee, or 0.00 if you don't charge one. In the Excel file, each line amount, both section subtotals, the subtotal, the tax, the estimated total and the proposed deposit are calculated by formulas. The tax rate starts at 0% and is applied to the subtotal plus the trip and disposal fee. The deposit rate starts at 20% of the estimated total. Change both to suit the job. To leave either out, set its rate to 0% rather than deleting the row, because the totals refer to it. In Word or on the PDF, work out the amounts yourself.
5. Edit the exclusions, access and pricing notes for this house, then send the estimate to the client and keep a copy.

The PDF is a blank form for printing and filling in by hand during the walk-through. The Word and Excel files have the same layout with the sample punch list filled in, so you can overwrite them and save a copy for each job.