Cost-per-home calculator
What does this cost each home?
Nothing you type leaves your browser.
1. Your community
Whatever you type here appears at the top of the working sheet below and the printout.
Enter your current dues here and each proposal above also shows what it would add to them. Leave it blank and that column stays hidden.
2. The price on your proposal
The figures in place are this page's worked example — $1,890 a month across 96 homes, from the made-up community worked through further down. Put in a cost or a home count of your own and the example clears.
Proposal A
Anything you like — including pool cleaning, landscaping, porter services, amenity staffing.
What that is per home
Per home, per month
$19.69
The worked example’s figures. Type yours above and they clear.
Per home, per year
$236.25
Total per month
$1,890
96 homes
Total per year
$22,680
Cost-per-home calculator
Worked from this page’s example figures. Enter your own and every figure follows them.
How this was worked out
Every line uses the answer above it, so you can check the whole thing on a phone calculator from the top down.
The cost you entered
$1,890, entered as a monthly price
$1,890 a month
This is the figure from the proposal in front of you, echoed back before anything is divided.
That per year
$1,890 × 12 months
$22,680
Per home, per month
$1,890 ÷ 96 homes
$19.69
Per home, per year
$22,680 ÷ 96 homes
$236.25
Divided out of the yearly total, not by multiplying the monthly figure by twelve. On a home count that does not divide cleanly those two answers differ by a few cents, and the one taken from your original number is the accurate one.
What this takes for granted
Each one is an assumption the sheet had to make to reach a figure. If one of them is wrong for your community, the figure above is wrong too — and the inputs are right there to change.
- Every home carries an equal share. If your documents apportion by square footage, unit type or phase, the per-home figure is an average and somebody is paying more than it.
- All 96 homes are paying. A community with unsold lots, or with an owner in arrears, spreads the same cost across fewer paying homes.
- The monthly figure holds for all twelve months. A service that runs eight months of the year and invoices only for those does not cost twelve times its monthly price.
- Sales tax and payment processing are not in this number unless you put them in. On a real invoice sales tax is its own line item, and paying by credit card adds a card-processing line to that payment; neither is part of the service price.
- Whether the price is good takes the scope, the term, and who turns up. None of those is a number this page can divide.
Your work
Everything you type stays in this browser. Nothing is uploaded and no account is created. A shareable link carries these scenarios and your dues figure inside the address itself, so send it only to people you want to see them.
Cost per home
Why the per-home number is the one that moves a room
A board reads the same money differently once it is split across the homes that pay it.
Per home, per month is the unit an owner already thinks in
A five-figure annual number reads as an expense to be fought. Divide it across the homes that pay it and you get a monthly line an owner can weigh against what they get. Nothing changed except the unit.
Proposals priced differently cannot be compared until you fix that
One vendor prices a year. Another prices a month. A third covers a different phase with a different home count. Per home, per month is the only column where all three sit on the same footing, and it takes one division to get there.
The dues question comes up anyway
Someone at the meeting will ask what this does to dues. Having the figure already, with the percentage beside it, is the difference between a two-minute answer and a deferred vote.
Worked example
The bigger invoice, the smaller share
Two vendors priced the same pool, and each one counted a different number of homes into the job, so the ranking by total and the ranking by share come out in opposite orders.
A worked example of the cost-per-home calculator. Two pool-cleaning proposals for a made-up community, both quoted monthly, over different numbers of homes. Proposal A: $1,890 a month over 96 homes. Proposal B: $3,100 a month over 180 homes. Proposal A, a month: 19.69/home ($1,890 over 96 homes). Proposal B, a month: 17.22/home ($3,100 over 180 homes). The gap, a home a month: 2.47/home (the larger share minus the smaller). The larger invoice is the smaller share, because it covers more homes. Every figure entered here is the visitor's own; VendoRFP publishes no rate for any service.
Questions
Questions worth answering
Everything you type stays in this browser. The tool does the division, and the dues decision stays with your board.
- Do you tell me what a service should cost?
- The figure comes from you. Enter the number on the proposal in front of you and the tool divides it. What a service costs is whatever the vendors proposing on your community put in writing, which is why the only number here is yours.
- Should I raise dues by this amount?
- Your board's call, under your governing documents. What this page gives you is the cost per home and what it would add to the dues figure you entered — the math to take into the room. What you have to do before changing dues is set out in your documents and your state's statute.
- Why does the yearly figure not equal the monthly figure times twelve?
- Each one is worked out from your original number, so a large community never drifts a dollar or more the way multiplying a rounded monthly figure by twelve would.
- What if the vendors cover different numbers of homes?
- Enter the right home count on each one. That is the case the per-home column exists for. A bigger invoice covering more homes can be the cheaper share, and the comparison table will say so.
- Where does what I type go?
- It all runs in your browser tab. Your figures are saved on this device so you can come back to them, and clearing the worksheet wipes them.
- What does VendoRFP do that this page does not?
- This page turns one number into another. Inside VendoRFP you post the work, vendors propose on it, and your board compares the proposals and selects one. After that the schedule, the invoices, and the service requests all run in one place. Every community on the account is free.
- Can I put more than three proposals side by side?
- Three at a time. Weighing five proposals? Run the cheapest three against each other, then run the winner against the other two.
- What happens if I leave the current dues box empty?
- The dues column disappears entirely, and everything else still works. That is the right way to use it when you are pricing a one-off out of reserves, or when the board has not settled on what today’s dues figure even is. Fill it in later and the column comes back.
- The work is a one-off rather than a monthly service. Can I still use this?
- Yes, with one thing to watch. Enter it as the annual figure and read the per-home-per-year line — that is the share each home carries for the job. The monthly line will still be filled in, because the tool restates every cost both ways, and for a one-off that line reads as though the work repeats every month. It does not. Take the yearly number to the meeting.
- Why is one row showing a note instead of a number?
- There's nothing to divide by, usually a home count of zero. The note names what's missing instead of showing a zero a treasurer could read as free.
Keep reading
What to do with the number
A per-home figure is one line of a budget. These three are the site's budgeting guides, picked by category rather than hand-listed, so a guide published next month shows up here without this page being touched.
- What drives HOA pool maintenance cost, and how to read a proposalWhich buckets a community pool budget has to carry, what makes one proposal higher than another, and how to write a scope so two proposals are finally comparable.Budgeting · 7 min read
- What an HOA reserve study contains and when your board needs oneA reserve study is two things bound together: a list of everything the association will have to replace, and a funding plan for what to set aside each year. Skip it, or file it away unread, and the special assessment shows up instead.Budgeting · 7 min read
- How to build an HOA annual budgetA step-by-step walkthrough of building an HOA annual budget that holds up. Start from last year's actuals, then set dues, fund the reserves, and plan for the mid-year surprises.Budgeting · 7 min read
Running a service company? Start your application and see the work as it’s posted.