why renorates exists
someone should be checking the price. nobody was.
RenoRates is built and run by one person in Singapore — funded entirely by the homeowners who use it, and by nobody else.
Julien Dahmoun
Founder · 6 years in Singapore
it started by watching a colleague sign
A teammate got his BTO keys and started his renovation. Every day he came in excited — and every day, slightly anxious. Was that carpentry number normal? Should he pay that much upfront? Was the ID being straight with him? He is a smart, careful person doing this for the first time, spending tens of thousands of dollars, with no way to tell a fair line item from an inflated one.
I have lived in Singapore for six years, and what struck me was how much help exists for choosing a firm — directories, reviews, matching services, portfolios — and how little exists for the question everyone actually loses sleep over: is this price fair, and what should I push back on?
Nobody was answering that independently. So I built the thing I wanted him to have before he signed.
the missing layer
Most platforms in this industry are paid by the firms they recommend. That is a perfectly legitimate business — but it means they structurally cannot tell you that a firm they just recommended is quoting you 30% over market. Someone has to be on the homeowner's side of the table, with nothing to sell but the answer. That is the whole idea.
CaseTrust
protects your deposit
Independent audits
check the workmanship
RenoRates
checks the price
We are not replacing anyone in your renovation. We sit at one specific moment — the days before you sign — and hand you perspective you could not otherwise get.
every quote makes the next one clearer
Renovation pricing is opaque because every homeowner negotiates alone, once, with no memory of what anyone else paid. Contractors see thousands of quotes; you see three. Every quote audited here is stripped of names and added — anonymised — to a Singapore benchmark that makes the next homeowner's verdict sharper. You are not just checking your quote; you are handing the next person a better one. That is the community helping itself, and it is the part I care about most.
what we are not
We don't match you with firms.
No directory, no shortlist, no leads.
We never recommend a contractor or ID.
We audit the quote in front of you, not the company behind it.
We take zero money from the trade.
No placement, no commissions, no sponsored anything — ever.
The full accounting is on the how we make money page. And where we have no reliable data for an item, the report says “no benchmark” rather than guessing — the reasoning is in the methodology. An audit is an informational benchmark, not a licensed surveyor's valuation.
I read every email that comes in, and I would rather hear that an audit missed something than not hear it. Write to me at hello@renorates.sg.
check my quote — free