TLDR: Before you hire a builder for an addition or a major renovation, ask five things. Which contract do you use, and who pays when you miss something? How are change orders approved and priced? Are payments tied to construction milestones? Will a past client tell us the warranty was honoured? How do you work with our designer before permits are drawn? Then call references from two or three years ago and ask about warranty work after the final cheque. You will work with this team for 12 to 14 months, so the answers matter more than the number on the first quote.
Scroll through r/toronto or r/Renovations in any given week and the same post turns up. A homeowner hires a builder, construction starts, problems multiply, and sometimes the builder stops showing up. Most of those homeowners read the reviews and got three quotes. What they did not have was the right questions.
Below is the list we would give a friend, grouped by when to ask it. It works on any builder you are vetting, including us.
Before the first call: build a shortlist worth calling
Start local. A builder based in Oakville working on your house in Scarborough will put your project at the bottom of the list whenever their local jobs need them.
Reviews start the list. Google reviews tell you a company is operating. They will not tell you what happened when a project ran eight weeks late or the tile arrived cracked. A builder whose past clients will sit in front of a camera and talk about the experience is telling you something stronger.
Ask to walk a current site. Look for cleanliness, safety and attention to detail. A builder who trusts the process says yes without hesitating. More than once, a family has told us a site visit was what decided it for them.
Check the paperwork before you invest the time. Ask for a WSIB clearance certificate and a certificate of insurance. Then run a lien search on two or three of the builder’s finished addresses. Subcontractor liens mean the builder does not pay its trades, and you do not want to be liable for what it owes them.
Questions to ask a builder at the first meeting
“Which contract do you use: fixed price, cost plus or a management fee?” Each one puts the financial risk in a different place. We only build fixed price, because it forces us to confirm every number before the paperwork goes out, and anything we miss comes out of our margin. A good answer says plainly who pays for the builder’s own mistakes. Our full reasoning is in Fixed Price vs Cost Plus.
“How do change orders work?” Every project has them. What matters is who approves them, what the markup is and how they are documented. A vague answer here is a flag.
“How are payments scheduled?” Progress billing tied to construction milestones is fair and standard. A large deposit up front that is not tied to work on site is not. Ask for a copy of the contract at this meeting, so you read it long before anyone asks you to sign it.
“Can you give us a rough budget from our wish list?” The answer should be yes. You want to know whether you can afford the work before you pay a designer to draw it. The most common expensive mistake we see is waiting until the designs are finished to get pricing.
“How do you work with our architect and designer before permits are drawn?” Most of the risk on an addition gets locked in during design. An architect can draw anything. A builder’s job at that stage is to flag when a feature is going to cost 40% more than expected, while changing it is still cheap. A bad answer is “send us the drawings when they are done.”
“How far out are you booked?” Reputable, sought-after builders are usually booked six to twelve months out. One who can start next week is worth asking why.
“Who will we deal with every week?” You will be in this relationship for over a year. A communication mismatch in month three makes for a long project for everyone.
“What will you need to know from us?” Listen for curiosity. A builder who prices your project after a 20-minute walkthrough and no follow-up questions is guessing, and you pay for the guess later. We wrote up the questions we ask families on our own first call in Questions a Builder Should Ask You on the First Call.
Questions to ask a builder’s references
Builders hand out references from their cleanest projects, so the questions have to do the digging.
Ask for a client from two or three years ago. Did the builder come back for warranty work after the final cheque cleared?
Ask for a client whose project hit a problem. In Ontario the standard warranty is two years on labour and workmanship, and nearly every builder offers one. Whether they show up to honour it is what a reference can tell you.
Ask whether the project held its schedule and budget, and if it did not, how the builder responded.
Ask what they wish they had known before starting.
Once you have drawings: questions about the budget
With permit drawings, any reputable builder can price your scope (with preliminary drawings, structural and HVAC can only be estimated). Check five things:
Are they asking you a lot of questions? A builder who takes your drawings and returns a number is not pricing what you want.
Is the price itemized by activity? If a builder will not break the cost down, take them off the list.
Does it account for what you will pay directly? The full picture includes costs that never pass through the builder’s invoice.
Did they suggest savings without cutting corners? Challenge every builder to value engineer the scope.
Will they walk the budget line by line? Give them feedback in that meeting. A builder who adjusts when you push back is one you can work with for a year.
What most homeowners get wrong
They hire the lowest number. The red flag in a quote is usually not what is in it but what is missing, and if you do not know what you do not know, you cannot spot it. We have watched a homeowner sign the cheapest quote and find out two months in that what made ours higher was already included in it. The $40,000 they saved became a $90,000 problem. When quotes for the same project differ by 30 to 40%, the builders are almost always pricing different scopes.
They commit after one meeting. The longer you spend with your top two or three builders before signing, the more you see of how they operate. We say it often: if homeowners understood how a house is built, a lot of builders would be out of business. These questions are the shortcut to that understanding.
The BVM approach: how we answer the same questions
Our first conversation is a 30-minute discovery call, with both partners on it if possible, and nobody quotes on it. After the call, a feasibility session gives the family a written scope, a zoning review of the lot and a preliminary budget. Pre-construction comes next: design, a verified fixed-price budget and procurement with our trades, all before a construction contract is signed. On an addition in East York or Scarborough, that design and permitting stage runs about six months.
We only build fixed price. Five change orders in our own system are our misses, and none of them were billed to a client.
Our warranty is two years on labour and workmanship, and we show up for it. A family in Leslieville whose main floor we had renovated called us months later about a sewer gas smell that more than ten plumbers had failed to find. It was not our work. We sent our plumber, found it and fixed it, without displacing the tenant in their basement apartment. When you ask us for a reference from a job that hit a problem, that is one we can give you.
Who this list is not for
Vetting a builder properly takes weeks: site visits, reference calls, a lien search and two or three meetings. If you need a crew on site next month, it will feel slow, and the builders who pass it are usually booked months ahead. We will not be the cheapest quote either, and we turn some families away on the first call. Exactly who is in Who We Are Not the Right Builder For.
Key Takeaways
Reviews start the shortlist. Site visits, reference calls and a lien search on past addresses finish it.
Ask every builder which contract they use and who pays when they miss something. We only build fixed price.
Ask for a reference whose project hit a problem, and one from two or three years ago.
Get a rough budget from your wish list before you pay for drawings.
A quote 30 to 40% below the others is usually pricing a different scope.
Frequently Asked Questions
Three is the common advice, but only if they are three builders you have already vetted, not three names from a quick search. The quality of the shortlist matters far more than the number of quotes.
Ask how the builder handled warranty work after the final payment. How they respond to deficiencies once the last cheque clears tells you who they are.
At a minimum, a WSIB clearance certificate and a certificate of insurance, plus a copy of the contract before you are asked to sign it. Run a lien search on a few of their finished projects too. Subcontractor liens on past addresses mean trades were not paid.
Ask us all of it
Bring this list to a 30-minute discovery call and ask us every question on it. If we are not the right builder for your project, we will tell you on the call.
Book your 30-minute discovery call
Related Reading
Questions a Builder Should Ask You on the First Call (and Why We Ask Them)
Who We Are Not the Right Builder For (and Why We Say It on the First Call)
Home Builder Warranties in Toronto: What to Ask Before You Sign
How to Compare Builder Quotes in Toronto Without Getting Played
About the author. Ryan Meagher is Pre-Construction Manager at BVM Homes, the Toronto home addition and renovation company his family started in 1997. He has been quoted on renovation costs and planning by Fortune, CBC News and the Toronto Star. More about Ryan.
