What a home renovation costs in New York City

Every guide to renovation cost starts with a range per square foot. The range is wide because it is trying to hold two different jobs: a partial renovation that changes what you touch, and a gut renovation that takes the home back to the studs. Once you know which one you are planning, and what your building will let you do, the number stops being a mystery.

This page does not print a figure. It walks through the decisions that set one, in the order they usually matter, so that a quote makes sense when it arrives.

The first question: how far back does it go

A partial renovation leaves the walls and services in place and changes the finishes, the cabinetry, a bathroom, the floor. It is quicker and it costs less, and in a sound home it is often the right answer.

A gut renovation takes everything out. Services are re run by the licensed trades, the layout can change, and what was behind the walls stops being a guess. It costs more and it takes longer, and it is the right answer when the pipes and wiring are the originals, when the layout has stopped working for the way you live, or when the unknowns behind the walls are large enough that opening them is the only honest way to price the rest.

Many homes sit between the two, and the visit is where we work out where yours does.

What moves the number, in order

1. How much comes out before anything goes in. Strip out is labour and disposal, and in an apartment every bag leaves through the common parts.
2. Whether walls or services move. A moved wall, a moved kitchen sink or a moved bathroom brings new services, often a filing, and always more days.
3. The finishes you choose. Tile, flooring, cabinetry, worktops, fittings and paint. This is the part you control most directly.
4. How much of the work happens inside restricted hours. The city allows weekday work from 7am to 6pm. Many buildings allow less, and a crew that works four hours a day needs more days than one that works eight.
5. Access. A walk up puts every cabinet on someone's back. With a service elevator you are booking windows and waiting your turn. Either way it sets the crew size and the length of the messy phases.
6. Approvals. A co op alteration agreement, a condo approval, a landlord's consent, a city filing. None of them are line items, and all of them take time before the first day of work.

Why the building matters more than the borough

We work across all five boroughs, and the trade is the same in each. What changes is the building, and the building sets the price.

Manhattan is mostly prewar and postwar apartment houses, where the board and the managing agent set the terms, the hours and the elevator bookings. In Brooklyn the job is often a brownstone or a row house, where the stair decides what can come in and the walls are shared with an attached neighbour. Queens has co op blocks next to two family houses next to walk ups, and each hands you a different rulebook. The Bronx is older apartment stock and two family houses, often with earlier work stacked behind the walls. Staten Island is mostly detached houses, where material comes to the driveway, debris leaves in a container, and nobody is queueing for an elevator.

Two identical apartments in two different buildings do not cost the same to renovate. That is the whole reason we look before we price.

What a gut renovation adds

The strip out is total, so disposal is larger. Plumbing and electrical are re run from scratch by the licensed trades the city requires. A layout change means filings and a longer approval. You cannot live in the home while it happens, because the kitchen and the bathroom are both out of use and the dust reaches every room. And the schedule is measured in months rather than weeks.

What you get for that is a home whose services, layout and walls you know, rather than inherit.

How we price it

From a written scope. Somebody comes to look before you get a number, and the number arrives broken into parts you can compare and change: demolition, walls and ceilings, plumbing, electrical, floors, kitchen, bathrooms, carpentry, painting. Payments are tied to stages you can see in the home rather than to dates. Changes along the way are priced and agreed in writing before they are built.

Where you can move the number

• Keep the kitchen and bathroom where they are.
• Renovate the rooms that need it rather than everything at once, where the services are sound.
• Choose finishes at the scope stage and hold to them.
• Give the crew the most hours your building will allow.

For the whole picture of how a job runs, from the first call to the start date, see what we take on and how a job runs. For the difference between a partial and a gut renovation inside a New York apartment, and what the building controls, see the apartment renovation page. Or tell us about the home and we will tell you what the work involves.

Questions people ask about renovation cost