How to Read a Siding Bid: Line Items That Matter and Red Flags
Short version: the number at the bottom of a siding bid means nothing until you know what it includes — and a vague bid is vague on purpose. A real bid names the exact product, spells out tear-off, house wrap, and flashing, and prices hidden-rot repair in writing before anyone finds it. The cheap-looking bid usually hides its gap in low allowances and long exclusion lists. Here’s how to read the paper like a contractor, make competing bids comparable, and spot the red flags before you sign anything.
The line items a real bid spells out
A siding bid is a description of work, and vagueness in the description becomes flexibility in the work. A specific bid tells you, in writing, what happens to your actual house. Here's what should be on the page:
- Tear-off and disposal. Is the old siding coming off, or is anything going over the top? Who hauls the debris, and is the dump fee included? "Remove and dispose of existing siding" should be a stated line, not an assumption.
- The exact product. Not "fiber cement siding" — the brand, product line, profile, and exposure. "James Hardie, Hardie Plank, select cedarmill, 7-inch exposure, ColorPlus in a named color" is a specification. "Hardie or equivalent" is a substitution clause wearing a specification's clothes.
- The wall behind the siding. The water-resistive barrier by name, flashing at windows, doors, penetrations, and roof-to-wall intersections, and how butt joints and corners are treated. In a wind-driven-rain climate this is the part of the job that determines whether the wall lasts — a bid that never mentions house wrap or flashing is telling you where the corners will be cut.
- Trim, caulk, and finish. Which trim boards are replaced versus reused, what sealant is used, and — for primed product — how many coats of what paint, applied by whom.
- Rot repair terms. Nobody knows what's behind the siding until it's off, so what matters is the mechanism: a stated unit price or hourly rate for sheathing and framing repair, and an agreement that you approve the work before it happens. Unpriced "additional repairs billed as needed" is a blank check.
- Permits, licensing, and warranty. Who pulls the permit and whether its cost is included; the contractor's WA license number on the document; the manufacturer warranty on the product and the workmanship warranty on the labor, both in writing.
Take any bid's headline number and add what the exclusions and low allowances would realistically cost — disposal, paint, permit, a plausible amount of rot repair at the stated rate. That adjusted number is the real bid. We've watched the cheapest of three bids become the most expensive project on exactly this arithmetic.
Allowances, exclusions, and the word 'boilerplate'
Three mechanisms turn a low bid into a high invoice, and they all live in the fine print.
Allowances are placeholder budgets for things not yet chosen — "$X allowance for trim material" — and they're legitimate when a real decision is pending. They're a pricing trick when the allowance is set too low to buy what the job actually needs: the bid looks cheap on signing day, and the difference arrives later as a change order you can't refuse mid-project. When you see an allowance, ask one question: what specifically does this amount buy? If the answer is vague, the number is decorative.
Exclusions define what the price does not include, and an honest bid has some — nobody sensibly includes unlimited hidden-rot repair in a fixed price. What you're checking is whether the exclusions swallow the job. If disposal, paint, flashing, or permit fees appear in the exclusions list, the headline number isn't the price of your project; it's the entry fee.
Boilerplate is the recycled text that appears in every bid a company sends, regardless of the house. Some is normal — payment terms, standard conditions. But when the scope of work itself is boilerplate ("install new siding per industry standards"), no one has committed to anything about your home. Here's the test: could this page describe your neighbor's house equally well? A real bid mentions your elevations, your problem areas, your product and color, the things the estimator saw when they walked your walls. Every bid we write is specific to the home for exactly this reason — the bid is the first piece of the contractor's work you get to inspect. Treat it as a work sample.
Comparing bids apples to apples — and the red flags
A full re-side in our region typically runs $20k–$60k, and bids for the same house can land far apart while both being honestly priced — if they describe different jobs. So before comparing numbers, compare scopes: same product line and finish? Same tear-off and disposal? Same wrap and flashing detail? Same rot-repair terms? Once the scopes match, the price gap usually shrinks — and whatever gap remains is the actual price difference, which is the only number worth negotiating over.
Then screen for the red flags that end up in the horror stories:
- A price that expires tonight. Real costs don't change at dinner. Deadline pricing exists to prevent the comparison you're reading this article to make.
- A large deposit up front. Modest scheduling deposits are normal; demands for a large share of the contract before work starts are not.
- One page, one number. A lump sum with no scope isn't a bid — it's an invitation to argue later about what was included.
- No license number, no insurance certificate. Both should be offered without friction. In Washington you can verify any contractor's license and bond yourself on L&I's website in about two minutes.
- Vague on the wall, precise on the payment schedule. When the money terms are the most detailed part of the document, the priorities are on display.
- Pressure instead of paper. A contractor confident in their bid will encourage you to compare it. Anyone working to stop you from getting a second opinion has told you what the second opinion would say.
