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HomeQuoteAudit Pricing Methodology

HomeQuoteAudit intentionally separates official economic inputs from verified project-cost observations. An official wage or price index improves regional adjustment, but it does not by itself prove that a specific roofing, HVAC or remodeling project costs a particular dollar amount.

1. Project baseline

Each calculator starts with a versioned national planning baseline plus project-specific inputs such as size, material, complexity and scope. Baselines live in config/homequoteaudit.php so changes are reviewable and reproducible.

2. BLS labor adjustment

The data pipeline imports the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) rows for occupations used by each project. When matching state or metro data exists, the engine compares local mean hourly wages with the national mean for the mapped occupations.

3. BEA regional price level

The Bureau of Economic Analysis Regional Price Parities (RPP) layer provides a state or metro price-level adjustment relative to the national level. Metro data is preferred when a ZIP has a mapped CBSA; otherwise the engine can use state data.

4. BLS material trend

Configured Producer Price Index (PPI) construction series are used as a time adjustment between the configured base period and the latest stored period. PPI is a trend input, not a retail-material quote.

5. ZIP to metro mapping

ZIP metadata can be resolved for user experience, while the optional HUD USPS ZIP–CBSA crosswalk maps ZIP codes to metropolitan areas for metro-level OEWS/BEA matching. Crosswalk rows are versioned by source period.

6. Verified project pricing snapshots

A verified local PricingSnapshot overrides the modeled calculation for its project/location. Snapshots can retain sample size, observation period, source method and metadata. Only verified snapshots are eligible for public local SEO pages.

7. Contractor quote audit

The quote audit compares a submitted contractor quote with the current planning range. Being above or below the range is not automatically evidence that a quote is unfair; scope, product specifications, site access, permits, warranties, financing and hidden conditions can legitimately change a final price.

8. Data-quality labels

  • Starter model: bundled development baseline without sufficient official/local inputs.
  • Official-adjusted model: modeled baseline with one or more official BLS/BEA inputs applied.
  • Verified local snapshot: source-backed project-cost snapshot explicitly marked verified.

9. Indexing policy

Individual estimate URLs are utility pages and use noindex,nofollow. Programmatic local pages are not generated into the sitemap merely because a ZIP exists; they become indexable only when a verified project pricing snapshot exists for that location.

10. Reproducibility

Official input tables retain source periods, sync runs are logged, and the estimate stores a methodology version. Production deployments should keep historical snapshots instead of silently rewriting past observations.