New York, NY
NEW ADDITIONS ESTIMATING.

## Addition Estimating in New York City Is Its Own Category New York City additions are not like additions anywhere else. You are working inside one of the most regulated construction environments in the country. The NYC Department of Buildings requires filing an Alt 1 application for most structural additions, and that filing triggers plan examination, special inspection, and a progress inspection schedule before a single wall goes up. Your estimate has to account for that overhead from the first conversation with the client. Estimate.Pro is built for addition contractors who need to produce a credible, detailed bid fast — without hiring an estimator or spending a Sunday with a spreadsheet. --- ## What Makes NYC Addition Bids Hard to Price **Union labor rates.** New York City is a union-heavy market. Carpenters under the Northeast Regional Council of Carpenters, laborers under LIUNA Local 731, and concrete workers under Cement and Concrete Workers Local 20 all carry prevailing wage schedules that shift annually. On public or city-funded work, the NYC Comptroller's Bureau of Labor Law publishes wage schedules that apply regardless of project type. Your material and sub costs have to be built around those numbers, not national averages. **DOB permit fees.** A new addition permit in New York City is calculated under the DOB fee schedule at a base rate tied to the job cost. For a $200,000 addition, the plan examination fee and permit issuance fee together typically land between $1,500 and $3,000, depending on the scope and whether the job triggers plumbing, mechanical, or electrical subpermits. Miss those fees in the estimate and you are absorbing them. **Zoning and FAR constraints.** Before you price square footage, you need to know what the as-of-right buildable area is. NYC's Zoning Resolution determines the Floor Area Ratio for the lot. In a typical R6 residential zone, you are working at a base FAR of 2.43. An addition that crosses that line needs a variance or special permit through the Board of Standards and Appeals — a process that runs six to twelve months and adds tens of thousands in carrying and filing costs. That context belongs in the scope-of-work before the bid goes out. **Material lead times and borough logistics.** Getting a dumpster permitted, scheduling a concrete truck, and staging materials on a Brooklyn side street or a Queens attached-home lot introduces costs and scheduling risk that suburban estimators never model. Estimate.Pro lets you build those line items into your saved workspace so they appear on every New York job by default. --- ## How Estimate.Pro Works for Addition Contractors in New York You do a walkthrough — physically on site or via your phone camera. Estimate.Pro's AR measurement runs on-device using ONNX-assisted live AR on supported hardware. If you are using photos instead of live AR, measurements are flagged as estimates so nothing goes to the client unmarked. From the walkthrough, the app builds a scope-of-work draft. For an addition, that includes foundation type, framing system, exterior envelope, window and door openings, interior finish level, and mechanical rough-in. You review it, adjust for what you saw on site, and the system prices it against your saved material cost workspace. Median time from walkthrough start to sendable bid: 8 minutes. The Free tier gets you there with no credit card and no platform fee on client payments. Pro is $39 per seat per month. Elite at $79 per seat per month adds Stripe Connect at 0% platform fee, invoice exports, and the full workflow for larger jobs with multiple subs. If you are running a crew of estimators across multiple boroughs, the Crew plan at $399 per month flat covers the whole team. --- ## Built for the Specific Work Addition scope in New York frequently involves: - Rear yard extensions on attached row houses in Brooklyn and Queens - Vertical additions (adding a floor) on detached homes in Staten Island and the Bronx - Lateral additions on semi-detached homes requiring party wall agreements - Gut renovation of existing space combined with new square footage under a single Alt 1 filing Each of those has a different cost structure. Estimate.Pro lets you save templates for each configuration so you are not rebuilding the estimate logic from scratch every time. --- ## The Bottom Line New York addition contractors compete against other licensed contractors who know this market cold. A bid that misses DOB fees, underestimates union labor, or ignores zoning exposure loses credibility fast. Estimate.Pro gives you a priced, documented scope-of-work in 8 minutes — one that you can stand behind when the client or their architect pushes back.