Why three bids, specifically
Foundation repair is priced per unit — per pier, per strap, per linear foot — and contractors disagree substantially about how many units a given job needs. Two firms looking at the same settled corner can specify 6 piers and 11 piers respectively, both in good faith, because pier spacing is a judgment call about your soil.
With one bid you have a number. With two you have a disagreement and no way to resolve it. With three, the outlier becomes visible — and the outlier is usually the one that either missed something or added something.
The observed spread between itemized bids for identical work runs 30 – 50%. On a $20,000 job that is real money for an afternoon of phone calls.
Do this before you request estimates
- Know the fair range first. Run the cost calculator or read foundation repair cost. Walking into a bid conversation already knowing that piers run $1,250 – $3,100 each changes the conversation entirely.
- Above roughly $5,000 of expected work, get an independent structural engineer ($450 – $600). Their report defines the scope, and three contractors bidding against one written specification produce genuinely comparable numbers. Without it you are comparing three different jobs.
- Photograph and date everything — cracks with something for scale, sloping floors, sticking doors. It sharpens the conversation and gives you a record.
- Rule out the cheap causes. Gutters, downspouts and grading cause a surprising share of "foundation" symptoms, and they cost $100 – $600 to fix. See signs of foundation problems.
How to compare the estimates you get
Ask every contractor the same four questions, and write the answers in a column each:
- How many units, at what unit price? Pier count and spacing, strap count, linear feet. Never accept a lump sum you cannot decompose.
- Is the engineer's report included, and who wrote it? A report by the company selling the repair is not an independent assessment.
- Who pulls the permit? If the answer is "no permit needed," ask why, and verify with your building department.
- What gets restored? Concrete, landscaping, drywall, flooring — in scope or out, in writing.
Then compare against the tables on our cost guides. A bid far below the others almost always has something missing rather than an efficiency advantage. Ask what, specifically.
Also worth confirming: license and insurance (verifiable with your state board), how long the company has operated locally, whether the warranty is transferable to a future buyer, and whether the warranty is backed by the company or a third party.
Red flags in a foundation repair bid
- Pressure to sign today, or a discount that expires at the end of the visit. Foundation movement takes years; it does not care about your Tuesday.
- A lump sum with no itemization. If they will not break it out, you cannot compare it — and that may be the intent.
- Large deposits up front. Some deposit is normal; a majority of the contract value before work starts is not.
- No permit, no engineer, no problem. On structural work, all three of those absences point the same direction.
- A free inspection that finds a five-figure emergency. Sometimes true. Always worth a second, independent opinion before signing.
- Warranty language that excludes the actual failure mode — a "lifetime warranty" that does not cover further settlement is not covering much.
How this works, and how we're paid
foundationsage is an independent cost guide. We are not a contractor — we don't perform, schedule or warranty repair work, and we don't employ or supervise anyone who does. What we do is publish the cost data and connect homeowners with licensed local contractors who bid the work.
When you request estimates through this site, the contractors who receive the introduction pay us a referral fee. That fee is paid by them, not by you. It does not change the price you are quoted, it does not buy a position in our cost tables, and it never changes a published figure — our numbers are compiled and reviewed before any contractor sees the page they appear on.
That is the whole business model, stated plainly. The longer version is in how we make money, and the rules we hold ourselves to are in the editorial policy.
Our estimate service isn't live yet. Until it is, the independent route is the same one we'd recommend anyway: a licensed structural engineer for a written scope ($450 – $600), then three itemized contractor bids against that document. Check each against the cost tables on our cost guides.