The short version
You're sitting at the kitchen table with three quotes.
$11,400. $14,000. $19,500. Same brief. Same square metres. They're all telling you they'll build the same deck.
They're not.
A few weeks ago we posted a real number — $17K for a 22m² composite build with a built-in bench and the substructure prepped to a 20-year standard. > Watch on Instagram: The reel and the comment thread — watch it here
The comments split into two camps.
One side broke the deck down to raw inputs: boards, subframe, labour, bench, permit. Total $10.6K. Where's the other $7K going? He hadn't lied. He'd just shown you, in seven lines, exactly how a $11,400 quote gets built. Inputs only. Lean overhead. No design. No warranty. No call-back when something splits in year two.
The other side — mostly builders running real businesses — defended the maths. I need to up my prices. Premium operators target 40–50% margin even on $150K projects. They weren't defending me. They were defending the maths.
Both were right. They were answering different questions.
Three quotes mean three questions. What's the cheapest viable deck? (the $11K). What's a fair deck at a fair price? (the $14K). What does it take to still be tight in year fifteen, with the builder still answering the phone? (the $19K).
Picture your deck five years from now. A board has split. You scroll for the builder's number. Does someone answer? Do they remember the build? Will they fix it this week, or refer you to a handyman they vaguely know?
That's the question almost no homeowner asks before signing.
Don't pick the middle quote because it feels safe. The middle is the average of three different answers — rarely the right answer to your question.
Pick the question first. The right quote almost picks itself.
read the full breakdown how decks really get priced in Perth