Granite Countertop Pricing – 5 secret methods

So, you’re considering getting a new countertop. You’ve gone to a few countertop fabricators to get an estimate. But, it seems like black magic trying to understand how they came up with the price.

So, how does it work? What do you look for? Since we help hundreds of countertop shops with estimating, we’ve seen the whole range of pricing. Here’s a few to look for, and to look out for.

How nice is your car?

Some fabricators use the “parking lot test” to figure out the price of a countertop. They look at your car, and try to judge what you’re willing to spend. Since there’s tougher competition for kitchen remodels than ever before, this is increasing rare. But, it’s something to be on the lookout for.

“From $29/sq.ft”

In many cases, this is the ultimate bait & switch. Sure, it’s $29 per square foot if your only kitchen countertop is a perfect rectangle and you want a pre-fabricated bullnose edge profile.

But chances are that you have something more complex. So you’re no longer anywhere close to the stated price. Or, you want a color that doesn’t make you dizzy every time you look at it. Go with the expectation that your kitchen won’t fit into the bottom rung.

Incredibly complex formula

Some fabricators try to figure out their production costs, down to the penny. Then they add a profit margin and that becomes the price.

The only wrinkle in this incredibly complex formula is that it’s impossible to really know the exact cost of a job before it’s made. Overall, this system tries to be fair based on costs, but those costs are fickle.

The open book

It’s like getting a price list. Here’s the price of the material, here’s the price of fabrication per square foot, and here’s the price for radius corners, cutouts, etc. This approach is the scariest for granite fabricators.

Maybe competitors can undercut the price by a few bucks. And maybe, all of the information is too much for a homeowner to understand. After all, most people only buy a counter top once or twice in their lives. Finding an open book is great, but make sure you educate yourself on what it all means, too.

Reasonable, plus extras

Almost every one of our customers claims to hate competing on price, and would rather compete on service – “we’re the fastest”, most beautiful, friendliest, or cleanest.

So their pricing is a good reflection of what’s fair if you shop around. (probably within a few hundred dollars of what you’d find from the competition) But, they will sell you their unique proposition. This is great if you care about the extras they offer, but you’ll probably move along if you don’t.

That’s 5 of the secret countertop pricing methods we’ve seen. Have you heard of a better one? Tell us about it!

Want to know more? At Moraware, we make software for countertop fabricators. JobTracker is scheduling software that helps you eliminate the time you waste looking for job folders. RemnantSwap is a free place to buy and sell countertop remnants with fabricators near you.