GENERALLY SPEAKING, getting anyone in the trade to tell you exactly how much something will cost is impossible: builders scratching out quotes on the back of envelopes and refusing to be tied into anything more concrete than “over €200,000” is commonplace.

Kevin Hollingsworth, a chartered building surveyor with McGovern Surveyors, says tender prices received by his company indicate how falling prices are being passed on to homeowners.

A recent 27sq m (291sq ft) kitchen extension returned a tender price of €35,000.

“We undertook similar projects this time last year and prices being returned were in the region of €45,000-€50,000.” He says the cost of a standard attic conversion – where the room is only classed as a store room even though it may easily be used as an additional bedroom – has fallen from €19,500 to €14,500, a saving of 26 per cent.

For an attic to fulfil all the requirements to house an additional bedroom – such as a floor-to-ceiling height of 2.4m (7.9ft) – the cost has fallen from €30,000 to €22,000/€23,000, giving a saving of 23 to 27 per cent.

A large kitchen extension plus internal refurbishment which would have cost in the region of €190,000 last year was tendered recently and the majority of contractors priced in the region of €140,000 to €160,000.

Hollingsworth says in this instance, the lowest tenderer returned a cost of €90,000, claiming to have a large majority of the materials necessary to construct the extension in store from a previous project which was halted on site, a massive saving of 53 per cent.

In today’s markets builders are happy to break even and just to get some turnover.

“The most important thing for builders in today’s market is to stay afloat so that they are in a position to capitalise when the market goes upwards,” he says.