Homewyse Improvements and Enhancements - June 2016
Wage updates, craftsman quality pricing support and improved consistency with material option pricing are the latest enhancements to the homewyse.com cost estimating calculators
The cost estimating calculators at homewyse.com now reflect the following changes:
- Wage Increases Increased demand for home services in early 2016 has resulted in higher wages for home construction and remodeling professionals. According to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, market wages in have increased by 0.8% since January 2016. Wages in homewyse.com labor cost calculations have been updated accordingly.
- Expanded Wage Range for Installation Tasks Both professional and consumer users of homewyse have requested that labor rate range in highly skilled work tasks (e.g. finish carpentry, tile work, flooring and similar areas, where installer quality can create a difference that the customer will pay for) include the option of using high priced "craftsman" level labor. We've accomodated this request by increasing the higher wage levels to hundreds of the Installation Cost Calculators. You may notice a significant increase in the "High" Labor estimates for many of these calculators. The "Low" Labor estimates will remain close to previous values, so the net effect of this change is to increase the range of labor costs.
- Calculator Consistency Costs for some similar tasks in the Material Option Estimators and the Installation Calculators have in the past appeared to be different. Although the underlying cost factors are the same, different default settings for the Material estimators have caused a cost discrepancy for default cost estimates for similar items. Typically, the Material estimators used "higher" grade material and labor quality as defaults, wherease the Installation calculators used "mid-grade" material and "basic" labor quality. As a result, Material calculators seemed significantly higher than Installation calculators for a similar item. We've remedied this issue in this release of homewyse. Now the default Material estimate options have been set to the same levels used in the Installation calculators - establishing per unit cost agreement between similar calculators.