Renovation Contract Checklist: Avoiding Extra Charges

A renovation contract does not need to be long, but it needs to be specific. The seven clauses below close the gaps through which extra charges usually arrive. If a contractor's standard contract is missing several of them, attach them as an annex rather than signing as-is, a professional firm will not object.

The first and most important is the scope annex: a room-by-room list of works and materials specifying brands, models, sizes and finishes. Porcelain tile is not a specification; a named brand, series and size is. Every dispute about what was included is really a dispute about a scope annex that was never written.

Delay penalties deserve a note because owners often assume they are aggressive. They are not: a modest daily figure after a grace period simply makes the completion date real, and a fair clause runs both ways, protecting the contractor when the owner is slow to select materials or approve samples. Contractors who plan properly accept two-way delay clauses without argument; the ones who refuse are telling you the programme was never serious.

The Dubai norm is an advance of 10 to 30 percent on signing, with the balance released against milestones. Avoid anything above 30 percent up front: once your money exceeds the value of work done, the leverage in the relationship reverses, and slow sites tend to follow.

A healthy structure for an apartment project looks like: 20 to 30 percent advance, 20 to 30 percent on completion of MEP and wet works, 20 to 30 percent on completion of finishes and joinery, and a final 10 to 20 percent only after snagging is closed. Each milestone should be inspectable, you or your representative can walk the site and confirm the work exists before releasing payment.

Resist date-based schedules such as 25 percent every month, because they pay for time rather than output. If the programme slips, a date-based schedule has you fully paid with the site half finished.

Variations, changes to scope after signing, are where budgets die, and the discipline that saves them is simple: no variation is executed until a written variation order is priced and approved. Verbal go-aheads on site are how a project gains 20 percent in cost with nothing to show for it in writing.

A proper variation order states the change in scope, the itemised price of the change, the effect on the programme in days, and the effect on the payment schedule, signed by both parties before the work proceeds. Keep a running variation log so the current contract value is always known. If a contractor performs work without an approved variation order, the contract should be clear that it is at the contractor's cost.

Watch for negative variations too. When a specified material is unavailable and something cheaper is substituted, the contract price should come down, which is exactly why the materials substitution clause requires your written approval: it turns silent downgrades into priced decisions you make deliberately.

Snagging is the formal inspection at practical completion where defects, chipped tiles, misaligned doors, paint flaws, incomplete sealant, are listed and corrected before final payment. The contract should name the process: a joint walkthrough, a written snag list, a rectification period of one to two weeks, and a re-inspection.

Hold the final 10 to 20 percent of the contract value until the snag list is closed. This is the only leverage that reliably gets small defects fixed; once fully paid, even good contractors deprioritise them. After snagging closes, the defects liability period of six to twelve months covers faults that emerge later, such as leaks or joinery movement, and the contract should oblige the contractor to attend within a stated response time.

Do the walkthrough in daylight with a simple checklist: sight along walls and floors for flatness, open and close every door and drawer, run every tap and flush, and test every switch and socket. Photograph each defect and number it against the written list so the re-inspection is mechanical rather than a fresh negotiation.

Walk away from any contractor who refuses a written scope annex or a milestone payment schedule, whatever the explanation. These are baseline professional practices in Dubai, and refusal signals either disorganisation or an intention to profit from ambiguity. The same applies to demands for more than 30 percent up front and to contracts naming a different entity from the trade licence you verified.

Walking away is cheapest before signing, which is a reason to run the selection process with more than one finalist. When you have compared at least three licensed contractors line by line, and a quote-comparison platform makes gathering those bids straightforward, losing one option costs days, not months, and no single contractor holds enough leverage to make you accept a bad contract.