Why nobody can give you a number over the phone
Search this question and you will find plenty of sites happy to quote you a per square metre rate. Be careful with those. A rendering price is not really a rate multiplied by an area, it is a rate multiplied by an area plus everything the wall needs before render can go on, and that second part is where almost all the variation lives.
Two houses of identical size on the same street can be thousands apart. One has bare brick in good order. The other was painted in 1994, has failed mortar joints along the south wall and no side access for materials. Same square metres, completely different job.
So rather than give you a number that is probably wrong for your place, here is what actually decides it. Once you understand these six things you will be able to read any quote you are given and tell whether it has been scoped properly.
What actually moves the price
When two renderers quote the same house and come back eight thousand dollars apart, it is almost never because one of them is greedy. It is usually because they have scoped the job differently. These are the six things that move a quote most.
- Substrate condition. Bare sound brick is the cheapest thing to render. Painted brick, failing render or crumbling mortar all add preparation cost before a trowel touches the wall
- Height and access. A single storey wall you can reach off a trestle is far cheaper than a two storey wall that needs scaffold, and a steep block or a narrow side passage adds more again
- The system. Plain cement render is the cheapest. An acrylic system over blueboard with full mesh reinforcement costs considerably more, because it is more material and more labour
- Texture grade and finish. A standard rolled texture is quicker than a fine sponge finish, and a polished concrete look feature wall is in a different price bracket entirely
- Detailing. Formed niches, capped piers, clean reveals around windows and letterboxes, and control joints all take time. Cheap quotes usually skip them
- Removal and disposal. If old render has to come off first, that is demolition, dust protection and skip hire before the new work even starts
Jobs ranked by what they typically cost
Without putting numbers on it, this is the rough order of what different rendering jobs cost in Sydney, from smallest to largest. It is useful for working out where your job sits before you start collecting quotes.
- Small render repair or crack patch. The lowest cost item, though minimum call out rates apply because it is still a day on site
- Bathroom walls prepared for waterproofing and tiling. Small area, but fine tolerance work
- Front fence and piers. Small job, and the highest visible impact per dollar of anything on this list
- Retaining wall. More than a fence of the same length, because of the preparation and drainage detailing
- Granny flat or secondary dwelling. A complete small building, usually blueboard or Hebel
- Front facade only on a house. Popular where the frontage has a natural stopping point
- Single storey house, full exterior. The most common whole house job
- Two storey house, full exterior. Meaningfully more than double a single storey, because scaffold is a real cost in itself
Why the cheapest quote is often the most expensive
The most common way a rendering job goes wrong is not bad trowel work. It is a quote that priced the render and ignored the wall.
If your brick has been painted and the quote does not mention paint removal or a bonding system, the render is going to be bonding to a paint film. It will look perfect for eighteen months and then start coming away in sheets. Now you are paying to strip the failed render, fix the substrate, and do the whole job again.
Same story with drummy render that was never sounded, blueboard that was never meshed, and retaining walls where nobody checked the drainage. In every case the cheap quote was cheap because it left out the part that determines whether the job lasts.
This is worth saying plainly: when you compare quotes, compare the scope, not the number. Ask each renderer what they found when they sounded the wall and what they are doing about it. The answers will tell you a lot.
How rendering is usually priced and paid
Most Sydney renderers quote a fixed price for the job rather than an hourly rate, based on a measured wall area and an assessment of the preparation needed. That is what you want, because it puts the risk of the job taking longer on the contractor rather than on you.
In New South Wales, residential building work over $5,000 must be done under a written contract by a licensed contractor. Work valued over $20,000 also requires home building compensation cover. If a job of that size is being quoted without a written contract, that is a genuine problem rather than a formality.
Deposits are capped by law. For residential work over $20,000 the maximum deposit is 10 percent. Anyone asking for half up front is outside the rules.
Is rendering worth the money
For a dated brick home, it is difficult to think of a renovation that changes the property more per dollar spent. A full render and texture coat costs a fraction of a kitchen and it changes the thing every single person sees first.
We are not going to quote you a percentage return, because every property is different and anyone giving you a precise figure is guessing. What we will say is that exterior appearance sets the ceiling on what a buyer will emotionally commit to before they have walked through the door.
If the budget will not stretch to the whole house, the front fence is the highest impact small job available. Two or three days of work and the entire frontage reads differently.
