What things cost here

Why nobody quotes from a web page

Any figure you are given without someone seeing the property is an average, and averages are wrong in both directions. On a Santorini renovation they are usually wrong by a lot, because the two things that move the price most — what is behind the render, and how material gets to the door — are invisible from a photograph.

So treat every number on this site as a band for planning, never as a price. The cost index publishes those bands with the method behind them.

Why it costs more here than on the mainland

Four things, and none of them is anybody's margin.

Freight, and the calendar it runs on

Every bag of cement, every window and every skip of demolition waste crosses on a ferry. A cancelled sailing does not cost hours, it costs days, because the next boat is already full and the crew has moved to another site.

Access

A property with vehicle access to the door and a property at the bottom of eighty steps are different jobs at different prices, even if the work is identical. In Oia and Imerovigli the material handling can exceed the trade labour.

A finite pool of crews

Between May and September everyone capable is committed. Scarcity moves price here in a way it does not in a city with a hundred alternatives.

The building stock

Cutting a chase into welded tuff or rubble stone is slower than cutting into blockwork. A vaulted cave house is not a standard job in any trade, and the people who do it well know it.

Why it costs more on Santorini goes through this with figures.

August is a different market

This is worth stating plainly because people read it as being taken advantage of, and mostly it is not.

• The island roughly triples in population and every capable trade is already committed.
• Callout charges rise, and out-of-hours rates rise further. That is real scarcity, not opportunism.
• Lead times on parts stretch, because the ferries are full of other things.
• Disruptive work in a let property costs you the booking as well as the work.

The practical answer is that anything which can wait should be scheduled between October and April, when crews are available, ferries are quieter and prices are softer. The exception is genuine emergencies — see urgent.

How to read a quote

Whatever the number is, these are the things that tell you whether it is a real quote or a hopeful one.

1. Quantities and rates, not one figure. A single number cannot be checked, compared or argued with.
2. Explicit exclusions. What is not included matters more than what is. A quote with no exclusions list has not been thought about.
3. Provisional sums labelled as provisional. Honest quotes say which parts are estimates.
4. A stated position on discovery. What happens to the price when a wall is opened and something is found. On this island, assume something.
5. Payment stages against work, not dates. A materials deposit is normal here; paying the whole job up front is not.

What to ask for before work starts covers the rest.

Getting a real number

The only way to a real price is someone standing in the property. What this site does is get the right someone there — the trade that actually handles your problem, who works the way your access requires, and who is not already committed for six weeks.

That part is free and takes about two minutes.