A Karori owner once handed me three quotes for a bank stabilisation and path job and asked which contractor was overcharging. The honest answer was none of them – the three had priced three different jobs, because the owner had asked each contractor to “have a look and give us a price” without writing anything down first. Comparable quotes don’t start with the contractor. They start with a page you write yourself.
Write the scope before you ring anyone
One page is usually enough: what the finished result should look like, the approximate area or length involved, any materials you already have a preference for, and any known site constraints – steep access, an existing wall, a tree the arborist has flagged. Hand the same page to all three contractors. It removes the biggest source of quote variation, which isn’t skill or price but each contractor guessing at a slightly different job because nobody described it the same way twice.
What spread between quotes is normal
Even with an identical scope, three honest quotes on the same outdoor job will usually land within about 30% of each other, reflecting differences in each firm’s overheads, current workload, and margin. That’s a normal market spread. A quote that comes in at roughly half the others is a different signal – it’s rarely because that contractor is simply cheaper. More often a line has been left out: no allowance for spoil disposal, a thinner base course than specified, or machinery hire assumed but not charged. Treat a dramatic outlier as a prompt to ask what’s missing, not as a bargain.
Real differences versus assumed differences
Some price gaps are genuine – one contractor plans to use a mini-digger and hand-carry material because the section has no vehicle access, another has assumed a truck can reach the back boundary. That’s a real difference in method and cost. Other gaps are just different assumptions filling a gap you left in the scope: one has priced treated pine posts, another has priced hardwood, because you never specified which. The fix for the second kind is going back to your one-page scope and adding the missing detail, then asking for a revised figure rather than guessing which contractor read your mind correctly.
Payment terms and deposits
A deposit in the order of 10% to 20% before work starts, tied to material ordering, is common for outdoor projects with a significant materials cost such as retaining walls or paving. What should raise a question is a deposit that covers most of the job before any work has begun, or payment terms with no milestones at all – nothing tied to base course laid, drainage installed, or wall backfilled. Staged payments protect you and give the contractor a fair, predictable cash flow; that’s not an unreasonable ask on either side.
Don’t use one quote as a weapon against another
It’s tempting to tell a contractor “the other quote was $8,000 cheaper” and see what happens. Resist it. A contractor who drops their price on the spot, without a scope change to justify it, is telling you the original figure had room built in – or that the new figure will have something quietly removed. The better move is the one already covered: take the same written scope back to whoever quoted highest and ask them to itemise where their number differs, then compare that itemised list against the others.
Getting this right matters more once you’re at the stage of actually choosing who does the work, which is a different set of questions again – covered in the questions worth asking before you hire. For the building-consent side of scoping any structural element, MBIE’s guidance for consumers on building work is worth reading before you finalise the written scope.
Frequently asked questions
How much should landscaping quotes differ from each other? For the same written scope, expect roughly a 30% spread between honest quotes; a quote around half the others usually means something has been left off rather than genuinely discounted.
Why do quotes for the same job come back so different? Usually because the scope wasn’t written down the same way for each contractor, so each one priced a slightly different job rather than the same one at a different rate.
What deposit is reasonable for outdoor work in New Zealand? Around 10% to 20% before work starts, tied to material ordering, with the balance staged against milestones such as base course, drainage, or backfill being completed.