New Hampshire Construction Estimating Services

New Hampshire gives you the one thing a Texas estimator never gets: a single code, everywhere.

The State Building Code runs statewide under RSA 155-A. Right now that’s the 2018 IBC, the 2018 IRC and the 2020 NEC, with the 2018 IECC doing the energy work. A town can adopt something stricter. It can’t adopt something weaker. So the edition you price in Nashua is the edition you price in Berlin, and the argument at the counter is about local amendments, not about which code year the building is on.

Then there’s the thing everybody moves here for. New Hampshire has no general sales and use tax. Materials cost what the supplier charges, and nothing sits on top. Cross into Massachusetts or Maine and there’s a sales tax riding on the material side of every line. That’s why a Boston-area unit price doesn’t drop into a Manchester estimate, and why the same building really is a different number on either side of the line.

The rest of it is the envelope. The state sits in climate zones 5A and 6A. Under the 2018 IECC, insulation, glazing and air sealing carry real money here — and the further north the job is, the more of your budget ends up in the parts of the building the owner will never see.

Every one of these has cost somebody money. We see them all the time.

1. The permit is priced off your number. Portsmouth charges $11 per $1,000 of construction cost on commercial work, minimum $150, and $8 per $1,000 on one- and two-family residential, minimum $75. Plan review is $50 per contractor per revision. A re-inspection is $100. Start without a permit and it’s 200% of the regular fee or $300, whichever is greater. Everything rounds up to the nearest $5. That’s one city — every town writes its own schedule — but the shape is the same everywhere: the fee moves with your estimate, so a $2M number and a $2.4M number are not the same permit.

2. Amendments, not editions. The state code is a floor, not a ceiling. Towns adopt stricter requirements on top of it and they don’t publish them where you’d find them by accident. If you price the state code and skip the local amendment sheet, you’re going to eat the difference at the first inspection. Call the AHJ, not the state.

3. The trades are licensed at the state; the GC isn’t on that list. New Hampshire’s OPLC runs an Electricians’ Board and a Mechanical Safety and Licensing Board covering plumbing and gas fitting. There’s no general-contractor board in its listing. That shifts where the risk sits in your estimate: the licensed trades are the ones with the thin labor market and the schedule exposure, and their numbers are the ones that move on you between bid and buyout.

4. A Massachusetts price is not a New Hampshire price. Five of the sixteen estimates on this page are across the line — four in Massachusetts, one in Maine — and they’re here on purpose, because that’s how the work comes in on the Seacoast and down 93. But the material lines don’t transfer. New Hampshire has no sales tax and the neighbors do. If you price a Nashua job off a Lowell job because the drive is twenty minutes, you’re going to be wrong on materials before you’ve priced a single trade.

We don’t ask you to take our word for it. Sixteen real estimates are on this page — four in each of the four categories we work in. $96.2M of construction value across 125 pages of takeoff and pricing. Open them. Read the line items. See exactly what you get before you send us a single sheet.

Commercial Buildings — ground-up retail, hospitality and mixed-use.

• Cochecho Bldg D, Dover – $26.8M (03820)
• Long Beach Motel, Gloucester MA – $2.3M (01930)
• DG South China Project, South China ME – $2.2M (04358)
• Queen City Project, Manchester – $1.9M (03101)

Multi Family and Apartments — apartments, senior living and multi-unit housing.

• Walk Hill Residences project, Roslindale MA – $33M (02131)
• Benchmark Senior Living at Rye – $16.4M (Rye 03870)
• Brierneck Crossing, Gloucester MA – $5.6M (01930)
• 54 Eastern Ave, Malden MA – $4.7M (02148)

Residential — custom homes, additions and whole-house remodels.

• 7 Holland Dr, Rye – $882K (03870)
• 239 Northwest St Project, Portsmouth – $435K (03801)
• Old Ridge Rd, Strafford – $433K (03884)
• 34 Old Turnpike, Nottingham – $306K (03290)

Tenant Buildouts — interior fit-outs in existing buildings.

• DSG 1388 Manchester, NH – $648K (03103)
• 1 Hampton Rd – Suite B-209, Exeter – $315K (03833)
• Anthropologie – The Mall at Rockingham Park, Salem – $183K (03079)
• Tesla Londonderry – $123K (Londonderry 03053)

Four building types, from a $123K store fit-out in Londonderry to a $33M residential building outside Boston. That range is the whole point — most shops price one lane and call it a service.

Look at Cochecho Bldg D. $26.8M on the Dover waterfront, twenty-two pages, sitework through electrical, storefront and retail built into a residential block. That’s not a spreadsheet with a square-foot rate in it. Twenty-two pages is what it takes to show the quantities behind a number that size.

Benchmark Senior Living at Rye is the other end of the same idea. $16.4M, seventeen pages, an assisted-living building on the Seacoast where the envelope does most of the work. And 1 Hampton Rd – Suite B-209 in Exeter is two pages and $315K, because a suite fit-out is demolition, partitions, doors, finishes and the mechanical tie-in, and that’s genuinely all it is. The estimate should be as long as the job, not as long as the invoice.

We estimate statewide. Here’s where the volume actually is.

The Seacoast. Portsmouth, Dover, Rye, Exeter, Hampton, Newington, Durham, Rochester and Somersworth. Six of the sixteen estimates above are Seacoast jobs — Cochecho Bldg D in Dover, Benchmark at Rye, 7 Holland Dr in Rye, 239 Northwest St in Portsmouth, 1 Hampton Rd in Exeter. Portsmouth’s fee schedule is the one quoted above, and it’s the one most Seacoast owners compare everything else to.

Manchester and Nashua. The Queen City Project and DSG 1388 are both Manchester jobs. This is the deepest sub market in the state and the one where a Massachusetts contractor is most likely to be bidding against you.

Salem and the border towns. Salem, Londonderry, Derry, Windham, Pelham and Plaistow. Retail and fit-out country — Anthropologie at the Mall at Rockingham Park and Tesla Londonderry are both on this page.

Concord and the Merrimack Valley. Concord, Bow, Hooksett and Goffstown. State work, institutional work, and the towns where impact fees show up on subdivision jobs.

Rural Rockingham and Strafford. Nottingham, Strafford, Northwood, Barrington. Old Ridge Rd and 34 Old Turnpike are both out here — septic, well, long driveways, and a foundation that costs what the ledge says it costs.

The Lakes Region and the North Country. Laconia, Meredith, Wolfeboro, Conway, Berlin and Lincoln. Short season, long hauls, thin sub coverage.

The Upper Valley. Lebanon, Hanover and Claremont.

Every one of those areas has its own page with local detail. Start there if you want the town-level specifics.

General contractors bidding hard-bid and negotiated work. Subs who need a takeoff that survives a scope review. Developers who want a real number before they commit capital. Architects who’d rather price a design now than explain a surprise at bid day.

New Hampshire authorized 5,726 housing units in 2022 — up 173% from the 2011 low of 2,101 — and about 24,500 people work in residential building construction and the specialty trades here. That’s a lot of bidding for a state this size, and it’s why New Hampshire construction estimating services get used the way they do: you send the plans, we send back a priced estimate with the quantities shown, in a format you can hand straight to an owner.

We’re not a lead service and we’re not a software subscription. A person does the takeoff. Another person checks it. You can call and ask why a number is what it is, and get an answer.

What you’re hiring is a cost estimator who has already priced work under the 2018 codes this state runs on, in a state with no sales tax to bury in the material line, at a permit schedule that charges by your own number. Not a national square-foot average with the word New Hampshire written on top.

Send us your plans. We’ll tell you what it costs.