How we estimate

Each dashboard covers one project in one place, say, a roof replacement in a specific metro. We start from national, per-unit installed pricing for each material or system (the cost including labor, tear-off or removal, and disposal). We then adjust that baseline three ways:

• Local cost index, a multiplier that shifts national pricing to the local retail market (see below).
• Project size and options, the typical job size for that market and the material, system, or scope you pick.
• Local factors, climate, permitting, and other conditions that move real-world pricing in that area.

The output is a low–high range with a typical midpoint, not a single number, because real quotes always vary by home and contractor.

The cost index is a single multiplier applied to national baseline pricing to reflect what a project actually costs at retail in a given market. An index above 1.0 means a market runs more expensive than the national baseline; below 1.0 means less. It bundles regional labor rates, material availability, and demand into one honest adjustment so the same model can localize fairly across the country.

We calibrate the underlying inputs to public, authoritative data rather than guesswork:

• Construction pricing, installed material and labor costs are benchmarked against published construction cost data such as RSMeans.
• Electricity rates, energy-bill and payback math uses residential rates from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).
• Solar production, rooftop solar output and payback draw on NREL's PVWatts production modeling.
• Climate & degree days, heating/cooling load and weather factors come from NOAA climate data.
• Resale recovery, the share of project cost recouped at resale is calibrated to Remodeling's annual Cost vs. Value report.

coconest figures are modeled planning ranges, not quotes.They're built to help you budget, sanity-check a bid, and understand what drives the price, before you ever talk to a contractor. Actual pricing depends on your specific home, its condition, and the pro you hire, so we label every estimate and always recommend an on-site assessment before you commit.

We re-model pricing as our source data updates. Rather than stamp each page with a day-level date that ages the moment it's published, every dashboard shows the yearit's modeled for, and carries a precise machine-readable last-updated date for search engines and AI assistants. That keeps the freshness signal honest without pretending a number is newer than it is.

Found something that looks off, or want the method behind a specific figure? We read everything, reach us through our Contact page. You can also browse every live dashboard from Explore.