How a villa renovation budget is structured.

What a three-million-dirham renovation is actually made of.

No per-square-foot number published on a website survives contact with a real villa: houses of identical size in the same community carry different structures, different services histories and different ambitions. What is stable, and far more useful, is the shape — the proportions the money falls into. Across our own villa renovations it runs roughly five per cent fixed, thirty-five behind the walls, fifty-five on what you can see, and five held for what is discovered.

On a three-million-dirham renovation that is about AED 150,000 on permits, deposits, insurance and running a compliant site; AED 1,050,000 on structure, waterproofing, drainage, electrics, cooling and plumbing; AED 1,650,000 on stone, joinery, sanitaryware, glazing and light; and AED 150,000 held against what an opened building reveals.

Read it as a shape, not a quotation — your own will differ, and the four sections below explain what moves it. But the shape is the thing worth having, because a quotation that is materially cheaper is almost never cheaper across all four blocks. It is cheaper behind the walls: the one block a client cannot inspect before signing, and will not see fail for two summers. That is the only reason to publish this.

The four blocks a renovation budget is made of.

One — the fixed block, about five per cent. Permits, community deposits, insurance, professional fees, site setup, protection, access, waste removal and the cost of simply having a compliant site with people on it. This block barely moves with your taste. It is roughly the same whether you specify a modest kitchen or an extraordinary one, which is why very small renovations carry a disproportionate cost per square foot.

Two — the invisible block, about thirty-five per cent. Structure, waterproofing, drainage, electrical distribution, air conditioning, plumbing and the substrates behind every finished surface. This is the half of a renovation nobody photographs, and it is where cutting money causes the failures that appear two summers later — damp behind a stone wall, a chilled-water line sweating into a ceiling, a bathroom tanked badly. If a quotation is unusually low, it is almost always low here.

Three — the chosen block, about fifty-five per cent and no ceiling. Stone, joinery, sanitaryware, ironmongery, glazing, lighting and the visible material of the house. The only block genuinely under your control, and it has no ceiling: two identical villas can differ by a multiple on this block alone. It is also the block clients picture when they say “renovation budget,” which is why so many budgets are set at roughly half of what the project will cost.

Four — the discovered block, five per cent held as a minimum. What is found when the building is opened: unrecorded structural alterations by a previous owner, services that do not run where the drawings claim, water damage, substandard original work, non-compliant additions that must be regularised or removed. On a villa of any age this block is never zero. Treating it as zero is the most common budgeting error we see.

A budget is not a quotation.

The two are confused constantly, and the confusion is where most overruns begin. A quotation is a price for a described scope at a moment in time. A budget is the whole cost of arriving at a finished house — including the things nobody described, the things discovered behind a wall, and the things you will decide to change once you can stand in the opened space.

The gap between them is rarely dishonesty. It is the difference between what can be priced from a drawing and what can only be priced from an opened building. Understanding that before you compare quotations is worth more than any negotiation you will conduct afterwards.

How to read a quotation properly.

Two quotations for the same villa can differ substantially and both be honest. The difference is usually in what has been assumed, not in what has been priced. Three things to look for.

Provisional sums. A provisional sum is a placeholder for something not yet specified — frequently the stone, the joinery or the sanitaryware. A quotation heavy with them looks competitive and is not a price at all; it is a deposit against a price to be determined later, when you have less leverage and no time. Count them, total them, and ask what each is based on.

Exclusions. Read them before the inclusions. Authority fees, community deposits, temporary services, out-of-hours working, structural strengthening, hazardous material handling and making good to landscaping are all commonly excluded — and all commonly necessary.

The basis of the MEP allowance. Ask directly whether the air conditioning, electrical and plumbing were priced from a survey or from an assumption. On an older villa the honest answer is often “from an assumption” — acceptable when said out loud, dangerous when not.

A quotation transparent about its own uncertainty is a better document than one that is confidently wrong, and it usually comes from the firm that has done this more often.

Where money is actually lost.

Late decisions. The most expensive thing in a renovation is a decision made after the thing it affects has been built. Moving a kitchen once the drainage is set is not a kitchen cost; it is demolition, drainage, slab, a rework of the electrical, and a delay to everything queued behind it. The cost of a decision is never the cost of the item decided — it is the cost of everything already committed around it.

Variations that compound. Individually reasonable changes accumulate invisibly. Each carries its own cost, its own programme effect and often a knock-on to a neighbouring trade. A project with forty small variations is almost always worse off than one with four large ones, because nobody re-tested the total.

The cheapest quotation. In this market the lowest number is frequently the most expensive project. The mechanism is not fraud — it is that the low number was reached by assuming favourably in the invisible block and leaving the discovered block empty. Both catch up, and they catch up when you are committed and out of alternatives.

Coordination failure. Where design, construction and joinery sit under separate contracts, the gaps between them are billed to you — not as a line item, but as rework, as waiting, and as the compromise reached when two firms disagree about whose drawing was wrong.

The lever that actually works.

There is one reliable way to control a renovation budget, and it is unglamorous: decide everything you can before demolition begins. Not the concept — the specification. Stone selected, joinery drawn, sanitaryware chosen, lighting positions fixed, the kitchen resolved to the millimetre.

This feels slow, and it is. It is also the difference between a project priced once and a project priced continuously. A fully specified renovation can be quoted with very few provisional sums, built without waiting, and finished close to its number. A partially specified one is a negotiation that lasts as long as the build.

The second lever is a contingency you genuinely intend not to spend, held against the discovered block rather than against your own indecision. If it is spent on changing your mind, it was never a contingency.

What to ask before you sign.

What here is a provisional sum, and what is it based on? Was the MEP allowance surveyed or assumed? What is excluded? Who carries the cost of a discovery behind a wall, and what is the process when one occurs? How are variations priced — and will I see the programme effect alongside the cost? And what would you need from me, and by when, to remove the provisional sums entirely?

The last question is the useful one. A firm that can answer it has a process. A firm that cannot intends to price the rest of your house while it is building it.

The cheaper quotation is usually the one that hasn’t answered these yet. The right quotation is the one that answers them in writing, before you sign — which is how we price: the figure we agree on resolved drawings is the figure we deliver.