What does this cost each home?
Put in a cost a vendor has proposed and the number of homes that will share it. Get the cost per home per month and per year, what it would add to dues, and up to three proposals side by side.
- No account, no email, no paywall on the result.
- Runs entirely in your browser. Nothing is uploaded.
- You supply the figures and the calculator does the math.
1. Your community
Whatever you type here heads the working sheet below and the printout.
Supply this and each scenario also shows what it would add to dues. Leave it blank and that column stays hidden.
2. The price on your proposal
Every figure here is yours. Put in the number on the proposal in front of you and this divides it.
Option A
Anything you like — including pool cleaning, landscaping, porter services, amenity staffing.
What that is per home
Per home, per month
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Option A
Per home, per year
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Total per month
$0
0 homes
Total per year
$0
Worth knowing
- Enter the number of homes to see what this works out to per home.
- Enter the cost from the proposal in front of you. Every figure here comes from your number.
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?
- No. 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?
- Because each one is worked out from your original number, not from the other one. Round a monthly per-home figure to the cent and multiply it by twelve and you drift a dollar or more on a large community. That is exactly the gap a treasurer spots and a board then distrusts.
- 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.
- Does anything I type get uploaded?
- No. 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. Your first community is free.
- Can I put more than three proposals side by side?
- Three at a time, and we mean to keep it there — a browser tab holding a fourth and fifth column stops being a comparison and starts being a spreadsheet you have to scroll. If you are weighing five, 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, not 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?
- Because something in that row could not be divided, and a blank would have been the more dangerous answer. The commonest cause is a home count of zero — there is nothing to divide by, so there is no per-home figure to show. The note says which piece is missing, in words, rather than printing a zero a treasurer might 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 plain-English guide to HOA reserve studies. What goes in one, how percent funded works, what to ask a reserve specialist for, and how boards use a study to avoid special assessments.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
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