Three quotes is not a comparison
Getting three quotes is the advice everyone gives, and it is good advice. The trouble starts at the next step. Three numbers arrive, they are laid side by side, the smallest one gets approved. What almost nobody checks is whether the three quotes are pricing the same piece of work. Usually they are not.
Three trades, three different jobs
A tap is leaking. Three plumbers look at it. The first prices a new tap. The second prices a new tap plus the isolating valve behind it, because the valve is what let the tap fail. The third wants to check the pressure through the whole line before quoting anything, because a leak on a new tap usually means the pressure is wrong.
All three of those are defensible. Only one of them is the cheapest. None of them is quoting the same job, and the quote itself rarely says so, because a trade prices what they intend to do rather than what they have decided not to do.
The gap is scope, not margin
Landlords tend to read a price gap as a difference in what the trade wants to earn. Occasionally it is. Far more often the cheaper number is a narrower number: fewer hours, fewer parts, no allowance for what is found once something is opened up, no making good afterwards, no warranty that means anything if the fault returns.
That is not a criticism of the cheaper trade. They quoted the job they were asked about. The problem is the comparison, not the quote.
What a narrow quote costs later
A repair that comes back is not half the price of doing it properly. It is the first invoice, then a second call-out, then a second trade booking, then a second round of access arrangements with the tenant. It is also a tenant who has now reported the same fault twice, which is the kind of thing that shows up later in a renewal conversation rather than in a maintenance ledger.
Three questions before you approve
What is this quote not covering?
The single most useful question you can ask, because it forces the scope into the open. Ask each trade what they have deliberately left out. Once you have three answers, the three numbers stop looking comparable, which is the point.
What happens if it fails again in six months?
Ask whether the work is warranted, what the warranty actually covers, and who returns. A quote that carries no answer to this is cheaper for a reason.
Does this fix the cause or the symptom?
A tap replaced is a repair. A tap replaced because the pressure through the line is wrong is the same repair booked again next year. Symptom fixes are sometimes the right call, particularly on an older property where the full fix is a much larger project. They are only the right call when you know that is what you are choosing.
When the cheapest quote is genuinely the right one
Often. A simple fault with a simple fix does not need the most thorough trade in Sydney attached to it, and a narrower scope on a minor job is exactly right. The test is not price, it is whether you know what you are buying. Approving the cheapest quote on purpose is fine. Approving it because it was the smallest number on the page is the part that costs money.
How we handle it
Quotes on a property we manage do not go straight to the owner as a stack of numbers. They come back to the specialist who has been through the property and knows what caused the fault, and you get a recommendation with it: which quotes are actually the same job, which one is a narrower job wearing a smaller number, and which one we would approve if the property were ours. You still make the decision. You just make it with the scopes lined up rather than the prices.