The public figures for cost per square metre contradict each other by a factor of two or three for the same city in the same year. Here we publish our own values, we say they are ours, we show which trades they come from, and we update them each quarter against the DANE construction cost index, citing the bulletin and the date.
Nobody publishes prices, and the two guides in circulation contradict each other by a factor of three. What does exist: a methodology with a breakdown by stage, and a law that explains why half of what you pay is not the architect’s fee.
13 min
There is no single figure, and anyone who hands you one without saying what it includes and which month it is from is inventing it. What does exist: what the DANE index really measures, what is and is not inside a construction cost, and why the same square metre is not worth the same in Bogotá, Medellín, Barranquilla and Cali.
16 min
There is a factor of eight between the cheapest quote and the dearest, and both go by the same name. One answers what the rules allow on your plot; the other, whether the business works. What to expect from each, and why no reference rate exists.
10 min
The expensive question is not the price of the new square metre: it is where its load goes down. The code has a chapter for this, it separates growing sideways from growing upwards, and only one of the two forces a fresh analysis of the whole house.
14 min
A refurbishment is not budgeted per square metre: it is budgeted room by room, and what sends the figure up is not the size but touching the structure, the waterproofing or the layout. Where the legal boundary lies, and why almost everybody puts it in the wrong place.
13 min
The budget you were handed is for the works, not for the project. These twelve items are almost never in it, every one of them gets paid anyway, and several are a condition of the permit being issued. What each one is, why it gets forgotten and what its size depends on.
13 min
It is hardly ever because somebody lied. There are eight specific causes, every one of them foreseeable, and seven are controlled before the first bag of cement arrives. What they are, and what to do about each one.
6 min
We check what the planning rules allow on your plot, what can be built and what it costs, before drawing anything. Then we develop the full project through to the drawings and the permit application with the curaduría (the licensed private office that issues building permits in Cali and other large Colombian municipalities; in smaller ones, the municipal planning office).