Handyman Costs VIC 2026 - Get Quotes

Hourly Rates and Minimum Call Outs

Hourly charging is how nearly all handyman work is sold in Victoria, and the spread across the state is wider than in any licensed trade. A sole trader working from a van charges $65 to $110 an hour, and across Melbourne metro the band sits at $80 to $130 with inner suburb operators at the top of it. Businesses running several vans with an office behind them charge more again, commonly $110 to $150, and in exchange you get scheduling that holds and someone answering the phone. The lower end of the range is often a semi retired tradesperson working part time, which can be excellent value on straightforward work. A high rate does not prove competence and a low one does not disprove it, which is why comparing on the rate alone fails so often.

Minimum call outs catch more households than any other charge. A one or two hour minimum is close to universal, so a job that takes twelve minutes bills at $90 to $220 and the effective hourly rate on it is meaningless. Operators apply the minimum because the drive, the parking, the unloading and the invoice take longer than the repair does. There is nothing unreasonable about it, and the only sensible response is to make sure the visit has enough work in it to use the time you are already paying for.

The rate almost always drops as the booking lengthens. Four hours booked in advance commonly comes in ten to fifteen percent below the hourly rate multiplied out, and a full day fifteen to twenty percent below, because the operator has a certain day instead of a gap to fill. Quoting that discount is standard practice for established businesses and worth asking about directly if it is not offered. A household with a list of nine jobs should be asking for a half day price instead of an hourly rate, since the two numbers are not the same and the difference is real money. Operators price certainty above almost everything else, and a confirmed block is the most certain work they get. Booking a recurring slot, monthly or quarterly, drops the figure further again.

Travel time is charged in one of three ways and the difference matters on a short job. Some operators absorb travel inside a set radius, usually twenty to thirty kilometres, and charge nothing for it. Others charge a flat call out fee of $30 to $90 on top of the hourly rate. A third group simply starts the clock when they leave the previous job, which is the least transparent of the three arrangements and the one most likely to surprise you on the invoice. Establishing which model applies takes one question at the booking, and handyman services sets out what the trade covers beyond the pricing.

Fixed Prices for Common Jobs

Plenty of handyman work is sold at a fixed price instead of by the hour, and for well defined tasks it is usually the better deal for the household. A fixed price transfers the risk of the job taking longer onto the operator, which is worth paying a small premium for. Mounting a television on a plasterboard wall runs $120 to $280 depending on the bracket and whether cables are concealed, and on a brick or concrete wall it sits at the upper end. Flat pack furniture assembly is quoted per item at $70 to $150, with IKEA wardrobes and bunk beds sitting above that because the part counts run into the hundreds. Hanging an internal door on existing hinges is $90 to $180 while hanging a new door into a prepared frame is $180 to $350. Handyman TV and wall mounting and handyman flat pack furniture assembly are the two most requested jobs in the trade and both price per item.

Plaster repair is the most requested single job in the trade and the price depends on the drying time and not on the damage. A small patch, meaning a doorknob hole or a picture hook tear, costs $150 to $400 including paint touch up, and the reason it reaches the top of that band is that a proper repair needs two or three coats of filler with sanding between each one, and a fast setting compound behaves differently under paint to a general purpose Selleys filler. Operators who finish a plaster patch in one visit have either used a fast setting product or have not built the surface flat, and you can tell which by looking along the wall at a low angle a week later. Larger sections and full sheet replacement move into handyman wall and plaster repairs, while anything overhead belongs with ceiling repairs because working above your head takes twice as long.

Doors and windows generate a large share of call outs and most of it is adjustment instead of replacement. A door that has dropped, binds on the frame, or will not latch is usually a hinge screw problem or seasonal movement in the frame, and $90 to $180 covers the diagnosis and the fix. Fly screen repair runs $60 to $140 per screen with a new mesh and $120 to $250 for a new frame. Blinds and curtain track installation is $80 to $180 per window, dropping per window as the count rises. Handyman door repairs and installation covers the whole range, from a latch that will not catch to a new door fitted into a frame a century old.

Fixings into walls are where a cheap job shows up later, and the pricing reflects which method the operator uses. A grab rail, heavy shelf, wall mounted television or anchored bookcase has to be fixed into a wall stud, meaning the timber or steel frame behind the lining, or with a rated cavity anchor such as a Ramset toggle, and not into a plastic plug pushed through the Gyprock. Grab rail installation runs $120 to $250 and shelving $120 to $300, with the higher figures reflecting how hard the studs are to find, whether timber has to be added behind the lining, or whether the wall is masonry. Anyone quoting a grab rail at $60 is not locating studs. A rail that pulls out of the wall under load is worse than no rail at all, since the person leaning on it is relying on it entirely. Grab rail and safety rail installation is the page for accessibility work, and handyman shelving and storage installation deals with anything that has to carry a load on a wall.

Half Day and Full Day Bookings

Booking blocks of time instead of individual jobs is how experienced households buy handyman work, and the saving is the largest single lever available. A half day of four hours costs $290 to $460 across Victoria, which works out at $73 to $115 an hour against a standing rate of $80 to $130. A full day of eight hours runs $540 to $860, or $68 to $108 an hour. The discount exists because a confirmed block removes the operator's scheduling risk, and most will offer it once they know the list is long enough to justify it. Putting a list of five jobs to an operator and asking for a block figure is a reasonable opening position.

What fits into a half day is more than most people expect and less than an optimistic operator will claim. Four hours realistically covers five to nine small jobs, allowing for setting up, packing down and moving between rooms. A plaster patch needing three coats cannot be finished inside one visit whatever else happens, so it sits across two bookings by its nature. Jobs needing a trip to a supplier eat an hour of the block, which is the case for supplying materials yourself, and sequencing matters as well, since anything needing drying or curing goes first while the rest fills the waiting time.

Writing the list in priority order is the practical step that makes a block booking work. Give the operator the whole list at the start and tell them which items matter most, so that if the day runs short the things left undone are the ones you care least about. Without that, the sequence gets decided by convenience and the important job can be the one that misses out. Most operators will walk the list with you before starting and say honestly what will and will not fit.

Recurring bookings drop the rate again and suit properties with a steady trickle of small faults. A monthly or quarterly visit priced at $250 to $700 depending on length gives an effective rate of $60 to $95 an hour, because the operator has predictable work and knows the property. Rental portfolios, strata common areas, short stay properties and larger family homes all tend to end up here. The jobs also get done before they turn into damage, which is the less obvious saving. Handyman property maintenance is where those standing arrangements get priced, and handyman home repairs covers the one off version of the same work.

What a Handyman Can Legally Do in Victoria

The line between handyman work and licensed trade work in Victoria is drawn by the type of work rather than by the size of the job, and crossing it is not a technicality. Electrical installation work has to be carried out by a licensed electrician, and Energy Safe Victoria requires a Certificate of Electrical Safety once the work is finished. The licence covers replacing a light fitting, adding a power point, installing a ceiling fan, hardwiring anything at all, and any work inside a switchboard. Plumbing work sits with a licensed or registered plumber who issues a compliance certificate, and it covers water supply, drainage, sanitary work, gas fitting and roof plumbing. Gas work is the most serious of the three and there is no grey area anywhere in it.

What that leaves a handyman is still a very long list. Carpentry repairs, door and window adjustment, plaster patching, painting and touch ups, tiling repairs and regrouting, shelving and storage, mounting and fixing, flat pack assembly, fence and gate repair, decking boards, gutter clearing, pressure washing and general property maintenance are all unlicensed work and lawful for a competent person to carry out. A few tasks sit in a middle zone that catches people out. Replacing a tap washer is generally accepted maintenance while replacing the tap itself is plumbing work, and swapping a light globe is fine while changing the fitting it sits in is not. A handyman who offers to move a light or add a power point is offering to do something they are not licensed for, whatever they say about having done it a hundred times before. That offer is the clearest signal you will get about how they treat the rest of the rules.

The consequence of unlicensed electrical or plumbing work lands on the property owner and not only on the tradesperson. Uncertified work has no compliance certificate attached to it, which surfaces at sale, at insurance claim time, or when the next licensed tradesperson refuses to connect to it. Home insurers can decline a fire or water damage claim where unlicensed work contributed to the loss. Paying a licensed electrician $180 to $350 to do the job properly costs less than any of those outcomes, and it is the reason to book electrical services or plumbing services correctly the first time.

Working at height is the practical limit and not the legal one on a good deal of handyman work. WorkSafe Victoria sets duties around falls, and work above two metres brings control measures into the job, which is why gutter clearing on a two storey house is priced differently to the same task on a single storey. Roof work beyond clearing a gutter, meaning anything involving walking the roof, lifting sheeting or working near an edge, belongs with a roofing trade. A handyman willing to climb onto a second storey roof off an extension ladder is taking a risk that becomes partly yours the moment it happens on your property. Handyman gutter and roof minor repairs covers what can be reached from a ladder, and stops where the roof surface itself begins.

The $10,000 and $20,000 Lines

Handyman jobs occasionally grow into something the law treats differently, and Victoria marks the transition with two dollar figures. Domestic building work costing more than $10,000 needs a registered building practitioner working under a major domestic building contract, which is a written contract with prescribed terms rather than a quote and a handshake. That figure counts the whole of the work, labour and materials together, and it applies to the project total rather than to each invoice. A handyman is not a registered building practitioner, so a job priced above that threshold sits outside what they can lawfully contract for. Splitting one project across several invoices to stay under the line does not change the position.

The second figure changed on 1 July 2026 and it is the one most households have not caught up with. Home Warranty insurance replaced Domestic Building Insurance from that date, and the trigger moved from work costing more than $16,000 to work valued at more than $20,000. Under the old scheme an owner could claim in very limited circumstances, essentially the builder's death, disappearance or insolvency. Home Warranty extends to incomplete, defective or non compliant work where the builder is unable or unwilling to complete or fix it, with maximum cover of $400,000. The builder takes the cover out after signing the major domestic building contract. Anyone whose small job has grown into a real renovation is therefore in a better position than they would have been a year ago.

Knowing where your job sits against those two numbers is worth ten minutes before you engage anybody. A list of small repairs across a house will almost never approach $10,000, which is why ordinary handyman work is untouched by any of it. A bathroom, a deck, a carport or a run of built in joinery can cross both lines quickly once materials are counted in. Where a quote lands near either figure, ask the operator directly whether they are registered and which contract they propose to use.

The regulator behind all of this changed recently as well, which matters when you go looking for it. The Building and Plumbing Commission started operating on 1 July 2025 and absorbed the Victorian Building Authority, Domestic Building Dispute Resolution Victoria, and the domestic building insurance arm of the Victorian Managed Insurance Authority. Three separate bodies became one point of contact for registration, disputes and insurance. Searches that lead to the old authority now redirect to the new commission, so older guidance and older tradesperson paperwork may still carry the former name without being wrong about the substance. Consumer facing guidance also sits with Consumer Affairs Victoria and the state portal at the Victorian Government.

Deposits, Insurance and Paperwork

Deposit limits in Victoria are set by legislation and the caps are lower than most households assume. On a domestic building contract the deposit must never exceed ten percent where the total contract price is under $20,000, and five percent where the contract price is $20,000 or more. Ordinary handyman work below the contract threshold has no statutory cap, although the same logic applies as a matter of plain sense, since labour is not ordered in advance and nothing has to be paid for before the day. A handyman asking for half the money before starting a day of repairs has no cost to cover with it. Materials are the only defensible reason for a deposit on work of this kind.

Public liability insurance is the document worth asking for and it is far from guaranteed in this trade. Handyman work is unlicensed, so nothing compels an operator to carry cover, and plenty do not. Twenty million dollars of public liability is the usual figure among those who do, and a certificate of currency is a single page any insured business can email within minutes. The risk here is concrete and not theoretical, since drilling into a concealed pipe, cracking a stone benchtop, or a ladder going through a car windscreen all happen on ordinary jobs. Without cover the damage becomes a claim against a sole trader personally, which in practice means a conversation with your own insurer about whether you engaged a competent contractor. Ask for the certificate before the booking, not after something has gone wrong.

Written quotes matter more on hourly work than on fixed price work, and most households assume the opposite. On a fixed price job the number is the number and there is nothing to interpret. On hourly work the quote needs to state the rate, the minimum, how travel is treated, how materials will be charged and an estimate of hours against the list you have given, or there is nothing to measure the invoice against when it arrives. Getting that in an email costs nothing and settles almost every dispute before it can start.

Consumer guarantees apply to handyman work whether or not any licence exists. Services have to be provided with due care and skill under the Australian Consumer Law overseen by the ACCC, and that entitlement does not depend on registration, a written contract or any particular dollar value. Where a repair fails or damage is caused and the operator will not put it right, the dispute path runs through VCAT, which hears consumer and small civil claims alongside domestic building matters. Keeping the quote, the invoice and dated photographs of the work is what makes such a claim straightforward instead of arguable. None of that paperwork exists on a cash job with nothing written down.

Materials, Markup and Who Supplies

Materials get charged in three different ways and the choice is usually yours to make. The operator buys them and invoices the cost plus a markup of ten to twenty percent, along with the time spent buying, which is the default arrangement. You buy them and the operator fits them, which removes both the markup and the shopping trip from the bill. Or the parts come off the van as existing stock, at a small margin and no travel at all, which is the cheapest of the three and the reason a well stocked operator can be better value at a higher hourly rate. Asking what the van carries is a more useful question than asking about the markup percentage.

Supplying your own materials only saves money if you buy the right thing. A wrong size tap washer, a bracket rated for the wrong load, or or a door handle whose fixing holes sit at a different spacing each turn a saving into a wasted visit and a second minimum charge. The safe approach is to ask the operator to specify exactly what to buy, in writing, before you set off for Bunnings or a trade supplier. Most are happy to do it, since it saves them a trip as well. Where the item is at all technical, meaning anything structural, load bearing or safety related, let the operator specify and supply it and pay the markup without arguing. The markup on a $40 part is $6, which is not the place to economise.

Waste removal is the cost that gets left off quotes and then appears on invoices. A day of repairs produces old doors, timber offcuts, broken fixtures, flat pack packaging and torn flyscreens, and none of it fits in a household bin. Small volumes go in the operator's van at no charge, while a trailer load attracts $80 to $250 in tipping and transport. Waste in Victoria is handled under the framework administered by the Environment Protection Authority Victoria, and legitimate operators tip at licensed facilities instead of finding a quiet reserve.

Paint causes more trouble on touch up work than any other material, because even a Dulux or Taubmans colour matched from a chip will not match paintwork that has already weathered. A patch painted from a tin in the shed will not match a wall that has spent eight years in the sun, and a touch up that stops at the patch edge shows as a lighter square once light falls across the wall at an angle. Painting the full wall corner to corner is what avoids that, and it changes the price, which is why a plaster patch quote should say whether painting is included and how far that painting extends. Operators who raise this before you do are telling you they have done the job properly before. Handyman painting and touch ups prices the small work, including the question of how much wall gets repainted around a patch.

Rentals, Strata and Pre Sale Work

Investment properties are where handyman pricing works differently, because the buyer is comparing the repair against the cost of not doing it. A rental with a sticking door, a torn flyscreen and a loose towel rail generates maintenance requests, and each request costs the agent time and the owner a call out. Bundling those into one quarterly visit at $250 to $700 is cheaper than three separate attendances and keeps the tenancy quieter. Owners with several properties commonly put one operator on a rolling arrangement across all of them, which buys a better rate and a faster response.

Rental work carries a timing obligation that owners occasionally forget. Residential tenancy rules in Victoria distinguish urgent repairs from non urgent ones, with tighter timeframes and different consequences attached to the urgent category, and things like a burst pipe, a failed hot water service or a serious safety issue fall into it. Most handyman work is firmly in the non urgent category, which still carries a response obligation. The practical point is that a standing arrangement with an operator who knows the property answers both categories faster than ringing around does. Agents will usually accept an owner nominated tradesperson if one is in place before something breaks. Pre existing arrangements also stop the agent defaulting to their own contractor at their own rate.

Strata and owners corporation work has its own approval path and it slows things down. Repairs to common property, meaning shared corridors, external walls, roofs, fences on the boundary and common area fixtures, are an owners corporation matter rather than an individual lot owner's expense. A lot owner who engages a handyman to fix something in common property may not be reimbursed for it. Reporting the issue to the owners corporation manager in writing is the correct first step, and it also puts the cost where it belongs. Where a building has a maintenance plan, small repairs are usually already budgeted and the manager can authorise them without a vote.

Pre sale work is the highest return handyman spending most households will ever do. A list covering sticking doors, cracked tiles, chipped paint, a loose handrail, torn screens and a tired front entry runs $400 to $1,600 and is visible to every buyer who walks through. Agents will generally point out what buyers notice and what they do not, and the ones that matter are the visible signs of neglect instead of the things that are actually broken. Booking it as a single half or full day three weeks before the first inspection is the usual pattern, and handyman pre sale home repairs lists what agents ask for most often.

Travel, Access and Call Out Zones

Travel is priced quietly and it shapes which operators will even quote on your job. Most sole traders work a radius of around twenty five kilometres and absorb the travel inside it, which is why a Melbourne inner suburb has dozens of operators competing and an outer fringe suburb has a handful. Beyond it the choices are a fixed travel charge of $30 to $90, an hourly rate for the drive, or a refusal to attend for one small job. Outer suburban and city fringe properties should expect the travel charge and should plan around it by making the visit worthwhile. Two hours of work with a $60 travel charge is a far better ratio than twenty minutes with the same charge attached.

Access affects the price more in inner Melbourne than anywhere else in the state. A terrace in Fitzroy or Richmond with no off street parking, a single frontage and a rear yard reached through the house is a different job to the same repair in a suburb with a driveway. Parking permits, loading zones, time limited spaces and carrying materials through living areas all add real time, and some operators price an access premium for the inner suburbs. Apartment work adds lift bookings, building manager sign in and a short site induction on newer towers, which can add an hour before any work starts.

Clearing the way before the operator arrives is the cheapest thing you can do to reduce an hourly bill. Move furniture away from the wall being patched, empty the cupboard whose door needs adjusting, clear the shed, take the car out of the driveway and have the pets contained. Every one of those takes you five minutes and would take the operator fifteen at your hourly rate. Having power, water and light available in the work area matters on older properties where a room may have neither. Telling the operator about a difficult access situation when booking, rather than letting them discover it, stops the job being repriced on the doorstep. Honest information at the booking stage almost always produces a lower figure than a surprise does.

Bundling Jobs to Bring the Cost Down

Bundling is the one lever on handyman pricing that sits entirely with the household, and it produces bigger savings than negotiating ever will. The mechanism is simple, since the minimum charge, the travel and the setting up are fixed costs that get spread across whatever work is in the visit. One job carries all of those fixed costs by itself. Nine jobs share them between nine, which is how the effective price per job falls from $190 to around $42 on the same hourly rate.

Keeping a running list is the habit that makes it work, and the reason most households do not is that small faults get tolerated instead of recorded. A note on the fridge, a list in a phone, or a shared note between a couple all serve. Every time something sticks, rattles, leaks slightly, needs a shelf, needs anchoring, or has a screw missing, it goes on the list instead of into the back of your mind. When the list reaches five or six items, book a half day. The discipline is in resisting the urge to ring the moment something breaks, which is the behaviour the pricing model punishes hardest.

Grouping by room and by trade also shortens the day. All the plaster patching in one pass, all the door adjustments in another, all the mounting and fixing together, because the tools stay in hand and the drill bit stays in the chuck. Telling the operator the full list at the start lets them sequence it that way instead of walking back and forth. Anything needing drying time, meaning filler, sealant, grout or paint, goes first so the waiting happens while other work proceeds. A well sequenced four hours gets noticeably more done than a badly sequenced one. Ten minutes spent grouping the list before they arrive is worth half an hour on the day.

Neighbours are the underused version of the same idea. Two adjoining households each with three small jobs can share one visit, split the travel and the minimum, and both pay less than they would alone. Operators are generally glad to do it because the second job has no travel attached to it at all. The same applies within a street or a small apartment building, and it works particularly well for gutter clearing, where the ladder is already up and the tools are already out. Handyman carpentry and timber repairs is the category most shared jobs fall into, since timber is what ages first along a street of similar houses.

Regional Variation Across Victoria

Handyman rates across Victoria vary less than most trades do, because the barrier to entry is low and every town has operators. Melbourne metro sits at the top at $80 to $130 an hour, with the inner suburbs above $100 and the outer suburbs closer to $85. Geelong, Ballarat and Bendigo run $70 to $105, which reflects genuine competition in all three and not a shortage. Smaller towns sit at $65 to $95 for the work itself and then add travel, which is where the real regional difference appears. On a two hour job in a country town the travel charge can be a third of the invoice.

Inner Melbourne carries a premium that is mostly about the buildings and not the labour market. Fitzroy, Carlton, Richmond, Brunswick, South Yarra and Port Melbourne are full of Victorian and Edwardian housing with lath and plaster walls, meaning timber strips rendered over rather than modern sheeting, along with uneven floors, out of square door frames and no wall studs where a modern operator expects them. Every fixing becomes a decision and every door adjustment becomes a judgement about which way the frame has moved. Operators who work that stock charge $100 to $130 and are worth it, because the alternative is someone drilling exploratory holes in a hundred year old wall at your expense.

The bayside and Mornington Peninsula market runs on holiday demand and prices seasonally. Operators around Frankston, Mornington, Sorrento and along the Bellarine are busiest through summer and over long weekends when holiday houses fill and short stay properties turn over, and availability tightens rather than rates rising sharply. Booking non urgent work for winter in those areas gets both a better price and a better slot. The Surf Coast around Torquay and Anglesea follows the same pattern.

Regional and rural Victoria prices on distance and on the size of the town. Shepparton, Wodonga, Warrnambool, Mildura, Traralgon and Sale all have resident operators at competitive rates within the town boundary. Properties on farms or in small settlements beyond them attract $60 to $150 in travel, or a half day minimum where the work itself would take an hour. Bundling stops being an optimisation in that situation and becomes the sensible way to buy the service at all. Rural households commonly hold a list for months and then book a full day, and garden maintenance often goes onto the same visit because the travel is already paid for.

What to Look Out For

Six patterns show up often enough in handyman quoting that you will probably meet one of them. Watch first for an operator who quotes a low hourly rate and will not put the minimum charge in writing. A rate quoted without the minimum beside it cannot tell you what a short job will cost, since the minimum is what most short jobs actually bill at. A refusal to state it plainly usually means the minimum is longer than the market.

The second pattern is an operator offering to do electrical or plumbing work without holding the licence for it. A handyman who says they can move a light, add a power point or swap a tap is offering unlicensed work, and the certificate that should accompany it will never exist. No amount of experience changes the position, and the offer tells you how the operator treats rules generally. Missing public liability cover comes next, and it is common enough in this trade to rule out before the booking. An operator who says the job is too small to need insurance has it exactly the wrong way round, since small jobs happen inside occupied houses full of things that break.

The fourth pattern is a quote treating a plaster patch as a one visit job with painting thrown in at no extra charge. A proper patch needs several coats with sanding between them, and painting that blends needs the full wall rather than the patch, so a suspiciously complete quote is usually describing a repair you will see from the doorway in a year. Vagueness about materials is the fifth, where nothing states who is buying what or at what markup, and unstated materials are where an hourly job quietly turns into an expensive one. The last pattern is an operator who will not put a projected time against your list, which either means they have not read it or they would rather the figure stayed off the record.

One more pattern belongs with the thresholds discussed earlier. An operator happy to keep going as a small job grows toward five figures, without ever mentioning registration or a written contract, is either unaware of where the line sits or content to ignore it. Either explanation should concern you to the same degree. Ask what happens to the paperwork if the job passes $10,000, and a competent operator will tell you the work needs a registered practitioner from that point. One who waves the question away is the one to walk from.

Comparing Handyman Quotes Properly

Comparing handyman quotes needs one piece of preparation, which is a written list you send to every operator unchanged. Number the jobs, describe each in a line, and add a photograph of anything that would take a paragraph to explain. Say which room each is in, since ten jobs across one room is a different day to ten jobs across a house and a yard. Note anything you have already bought and anything you want the operator to supply. Sending identical information to each operator is what makes the figures that come back comparable.

Five things should appear in writing before you accept a quote. Start with the hourly rate and the minimum charge together, because one without the other cannot be checked. The travel arrangement needs stating, whether that is included, a flat fee, or charged from the depot. Materials need a stated basis, whether the operator supplies at cost plus a percentage or you supply against a written specification. A projected number of hours against your numbered list comes fourth, and it is the item that separates operators who have read the list from those who have not. Last, ask for the public liability certificate, since an insured operator sends it without comment.

Three quotes is the right number, and how far apart the rates sit is already useful before you read any of the detail. Where the hourly rates cluster within fifteen dollars, you are looking at the market and can choose on availability, manner and how well they engaged with the list. Where one rate is far below the others, look at the minimum charge and the insurance position before assuming a bargain. Where the estimated hours differ wildly on the same list, the operator quoting the fewest has usually misread the job. Being twice as fast as everyone else on the same list is rare enough to doubt.

Walking the list with the operator in the first ten minutes is the most valuable part of the visit. Go through it in order, agree what each job involves, and say which ones you would keep if the time runs short. Ask them to flag anything on the list that turns out to be licensed work or bigger than it looked, before they start rather than after. That conversation prevents nearly every dispute that arises in this trade, and it also surfaces the jobs that belong with another trade entirely. Work that turns out to need proper preparation, such as regrouting a shower instead of patching it, belongs with handyman tiling repairs and grouting on its own booking.