What a refurbishment costs, room by room

A refurbishment is not well measured in square metres. Sixty metres of new flooring and sixty metres that take in two bathrooms, a kitchen and one wall fewer have nothing to do with each other, even though the area is the same.

The unit that does work is the room, and inside each room what decides the figure is a single question: how far you have to break into things. Changing finishes is one thing. Touching the services is another. Touching structure or waterproofing is another thing altogether, and that is where budgets double.

The legal boundary is not where almost anybody puts it

Before the cost there is a question of regime: whether what you are about to do requires a permit or not. The general belief is that the boundary lies in the money, or in "whether the services are touched". Both are false, and the articles say so without ambiguity.

And the same article lists what falls inside that category. The list surprises almost everybody:

Read it again: changing the plumbing, drainage, electrical or gas services is a locative repair and requires no permit. What takes a job out of that category is something else: affecting the load-bearing structure, the interior layout or the volumetric characteristics of the property.

When the work crosses that line, it enters a modality of building permit with a name of its own:

The three cost triggers

With the regime settled, the cost. In refurbishment there are three things that multiply the figure, and what all three have in common is that they sit hidden behind a finish.

1. 1The services. Changing a service means breaking into and remaking whatever covers it: wall, floor or ceiling. The material of the service is cheap; the demolition, the making good and the new finish are not. That is why a bathroom that is "only tiling" and a bathroom with new plumbing points are not the same job even if they measure the same.
2. 2The structure. Touching a load-bearing element stops being a decision made on site and becomes a design with a signature and liability behind it. And it drags in a requirement people do not expect: you have to know what is load-bearing before knocking anything down, and in a building with no drawings that means a measured survey.
3. 3The waterproofing. It is the item most underestimated, because it cannot be seen and because its failure shows up months later. Redoing the waterproofing of a roof or of a bathroom means lifting everything that sits on top of it.

Room by room

What follows is not figures: it is the factors that in each room decide whether the budget is one or three. They are the ones to settle before asking for a quotation, because if they are not settled, two quotations for the same room cannot be compared.

And a warning about the façade and damp: if there is damp, changing the finish does not solve it, it hides it for a while. Before budgeting the finish you have to know where the water gets in. When that warrants a formal study is in when a building needs a pathology study.

If it is a flat, the rules change before the cost does

In propiedad horizontal there is a layer that comes before the permit and before the budget: what is yours and what is common property. The façade, the structure, the roofs and a good part of the services are not yours even though they run inside your flat, and that changes who authorises.

What you can do without asking anybody, when the general meeting is needed and by what majority, and why the authorisation of the general meeting does not replace the permit, is in altering a flat in propiedad horizontal. It is reading to do beforehand, not alongside: a job the general meeting could not authorise is a job that may have to be undone.

Who signs what, and why it matters to the cost

In a refurbishment the client usually hires "whoever does the work" and assumes everything comes inside that. As soon as the job crosses any of the lines above, it does not.

• —If the structure is touched, the structural design is signed by a professional authorised by Ley 400 de 1997. It is not a calculation made by the foreman.
• —If a permit is needed, there is a file to lodge, with drawings and with charges, and a processing period that runs before the work.
• —If the building has no drawings, there is a measured survey to do first. It is a real item and it is almost never in the initial quotation.
• —If the work is in propiedad horizontal, there is an authorisation to obtain and working hours to observe, and both affect the programme.

When the refurbishment goes as far as strengthening the structure — which is a permit modality of its own — the procedure and the requirements are different, and they are in structural strengthening: what the code requires.

The second boundary, the tax one, and it does not coincide with the first

There is a VAT rule specific to construction: in a contract for the construction of immovable property the tax is not assessed on the total value, but on the builder’s fees — or on their profit, if no fees were agreed. I explain it in full, with its conditions and its trade-off, in what it costs to build per square metre in Colombia.

What matters here is the prior question: is a refurbishment a contract for construction? Sometimes it is and sometimes it is not, and the difference is not a small one: when it is not, VAT is assessed on the total value of the contract, materials and labour included.

The tax administration has been holding to the same definition since 2003. Contracts for construction cover building and the works inherent to the construction itself — structure, masonry, electrics, plumbing, drainage — and expressly do not cover works that can easily be removed without detriment to the property. On refurbishment, the criterion is written down:

And in 2025 the DIAN, the national tax authority, applied it to a case almost anybody would call a refurbishment: the waterproofing of façades. Its conclusion was that the special base does not apply to contracts for the maintenance of immovable property, but only to those for construction.

What to do with this, in practice: ask the offer to state how it is going to invoice VAT and under which heading, before you sign. Two offers that look alike can differ in the tax, and the one who bears it is you.

Why there is no table of pesos here either

In new build there is no official cost per square metre. In refurbishment the situation is worse, and for a reason that can be put without circumlocution: the component that weighs most in a refurbishment is the demolition and the making good of what already exists, and that is not a function of the area but of the condition of the property.

A three-square-metre bathroom in a building from 1978, with galvanised iron pipework and no drawings, and a three-square-metre bathroom in a flat handed over two years ago, are not the same job, not by a long way. The DANE index, which measures the change in the prices of inputs and not levels, is no help here either: it serves to update a budget you already have, not to obtain one.

How to ask for a refurbishment budget you can compare

1. 1Ask for the budget room by room, not for the dwelling as a whole. It is the only way to see where the money went and to cut back without cutting back blind.
2. 2State in writing, room by room, whether plumbing or electrical points are being moved. It is the variable that separates two quotations most.
3. 3Say whether any wall is being moved, and ask the budget to state whether that wall is load-bearing or not, and who is going to determine it.
4. 4Ask for the demolitions and the making good as items of their own, not diluted inside the finishes.
5. 5Ask for the waterproofing to appear explicitly, even if it comes in at zero. A declared zero is information; an absence is not.
6. 6Ask them to say what it does not include, and whether it allows for the permit, the charges, the measured survey and the structural design.
7. 7Ask for the contingencies, the administration and the profit on separate lines. An offer that shows them looks dearer than one that diluted them, and hardly ever is.

The items systematically forgotten in any works budget — and several apply to a refurbishment as well — are in the twelve items everyone forgets when budgeting.

The short answer

• —It is budgeted room by room, not per square metre of dwelling.
• —Changing services requires no permit; changing the interior layout does, and touching the structure demands a signed design as well.
• —What sends the cost up are the services, the structure and the waterproofing, because they force you to break into and remake the finish that covers them.
• —If it is a flat, you settle what is common property first; you budget afterwards.
• —The tax boundary is a different one and does not coincide: if what you have is maintenance and not construction, VAT falls on the total value of the contract.
• —And if you need a permit, the period running against you is 24 months, not 36.

At Plano Base a refurbishment begins with the real condition of what is built: what can be taken down, what holds, and what turns out dearer than it looks. With that on the table, the budget stops being a bet.

The definitions of locative repairs and of the permit modalities are transcribed literally from the articles in force. What goes without a figure goes without a figure on purpose: it depends on the property, and this article does not know yours.