Buffalo, NY
NEW ADDITIONS ESTIMATING.

## Estimating Home Additions in Buffalo Takes More Than a Spreadsheet Buffalo's housing stock is old. A large share of the city's homes were built before 1950, which means nearly every addition job you bid carries hidden variables: balloon-frame walls, knob-and-tube wiring that has to be rerouted, crumbling foundation ledges that need to extend before you can pour a new footing. A flat per-square-foot guess does not cover that exposure. You need a scoped estimate that accounts for what you actually find on-site. Estimate.Pro is built for that kind of job. Walk the site, capture measurements with live AR on supported devices, and let the AI scope engine draft the line-item breakdown while you're still in the driveway. Median time from walkthrough to sendable bid: 8 minutes. ## What Buffalo Addition Jobs Actually Look Like Most addition work in the Buffalo metro falls into a few categories: first-floor family room bumps, second-story additions over existing garages, and mudroom or covered entry additions that add livable square footage without breaking the roofline. Each type carries a different structural load path and a different permit pathway through the City of Buffalo Permit Office or Erie County Department of Environment and Planning, depending on which municipality the property sits in. Buffalo follows the 2020 New York State Building Code, which adopts IBC/IRC with state amendments. Any addition over 200 square feet triggers a full building permit and, in most cases, a licensed architect or PE-stamped drawing for structural work. Estimate.Pro lets you flag code-driven scope items — ledger bolting, shear wall requirements, egress window sizing — directly inside the estimate so the client sees exactly what the code requires and why it costs what it costs. ## Snow Load Is Not Optional Here Erie County sits in a ground snow load zone of 40–50 psf per ASCE 7 mapped values. Western New York lake-effect storms pile that on fast. When you're framing a new addition roof, the connection to the existing structure, the ridge beam sizing, and the ceiling joist span all have to be calculated against that load. If you're spec'ing an addition with a flat or low-slope roof — common on contemporary builds in the Elmwood Village or Black Rock neighborhoods — you need to document the drainage design and the structural capacity explicitly. Estimate.Pro's scope engine surfaces these flags automatically when you classify the job type. You control the numbers; the app makes sure you don't forget the line item. ## Energy Code in New York Adds Cost — Show It Clearly New York State adopted the 2021 IECC with the Stretch Code option available to municipalities. Buffalo and Erie County additions must meet continuous insulation requirements, blower-door testing thresholds, and mechanical ventilation standards if the addition changes the building envelope. That adds real cost — rigid foam at the rim joist, upgraded window U-values, HRV rough-in in some cases. Clients push back when they see those numbers without context. An itemized estimate from Estimate.Pro lets you attach the code reference to the line item so the conversation stays factual. ## Your Material Costs, Not National Averages Estimate.Pro does not force you to use published national cost data. You build and maintain your own saved material cost workspace — framing lumber at what your Apex Building Products or Hughes Lumber account actually charges, concrete at your local ready-mix rate, window packages from your preferred supplier. When lumber prices spike after a bad Great Lakes winter or a mill disruption, you update your workspace once and every new estimate reflects it. ## AR Measurement on the Jobsite For additions, the most time-consuming part of a site visit is often capturing room dimensions, ceiling heights, and existing wall lengths accurately. On supported devices, Estimate.Pro's ONNX-assisted live AR measurement tool lets you point and capture. On unsupported devices or from photos, measurements are clearly marked as estimates. Either way, the data feeds directly into the scope draft — no re-keying, no transcription error. ## Pricing and Platform Fees Free tier: no credit card required, no platform fee pressure. Pro plan is $39 per seat per month. Elite is $79 per seat per month and adds Stripe Connect invoicing and invoice exports. Crew is $399 per month flat for larger operations. On Free, Stripe Connect carries a 3% platform fee. On Pro and above, that fee is $0. For a $60,000 addition, that difference is $1,800 staying in your account instead of leaving it. ## Built for 25 Trades, Tuned for Addition Contractors Estimate.Pro supports 25 trades. The additions workflow covers new foundation work, framing, sheathing, roofing tie-in, windows and doors, insulation, drywall, and finish scopes in a single estimate. You're not stitching together separate tools for each subcontractor category. The full scope lives in one document you can send to the client or break into subcontractor bid packages.