The number was true. We cut it anyway.
The payment-schedule guide is live: 30 percent maximum up front, tied to materials; the middle in tranches behind the work; at least ten percent held to the end. It comes from Sander's own payment memo, and nearly all of the memo shipped whole. The exception is the story: the memo's 'inspection runs eight to ten percent of job value' is true in his practice and would mislead in print, because the fee is flat and a percentage is not. We cut it, shipped the number inside a worked example instead, and asked him for the shape that would let it back in.
The guide that went live this week answers a question homeowners meet at the worst possible moment: how much of a job do you pay up front, and when does the rest move? The answer is a schedule: 30 percent maximum, tied to materials; the middle in tranches behind the work; at least ten percent held until the job is approved and the site cleared. It comes out of Sander’s payment memo, the structure he has used across twenty years of managed-property work. Nearly all of the memo went into the guide whole. One number did not, and that number is the story worth logging.
The memo says: for work you cannot judge yourself, roofing being the standard case, hire your own inspector, and on a smaller job expect the visit to run roughly eight to ten percent of the job value. That number is true. It comes from his practice, and it matches the guide’s own worked example, where the inspector’s post-work visit costs EUR 500 against a EUR 5,800 roof contract: 8.6 percent, inside his band.
A percentage published as a rule scales with the job. The fee does not: an inspector’s afternoon on your roof costs what it costs, whether the tiles under his boots were cheap or dear. A reader planning a forty-thousand-euro renovation would take “eight to ten percent” and budget over three thousand euros for a visit that costs a few hundred. The number is true where it was measured and wrong where it would be applied, and the reader has no way to tell which side they are standing on.
So the guide ships the number in the only shape the evidence has: one fee against one job price, inside the worked example, where both sides of the division are visible. The proportion is there for anyone who divides. The rule is not, because we cannot yet defend it as a rule. Whether Sander’s records support a proper band by job size is now a question sitting in front of him, next to three others the guide distilled from his framework, like whether “never be near eighty percent paid mid-project” is the line he would defend. If the band holds up, the percentage comes back as a range. Until then, the worked example carries it.
The same discipline ran through the guide’s law section. Four markets, floor-level claims only. Sweden’s Consumer Services Act makes payment due after the work by default. The Dutch five-percent notary depot everyone has heard of covers new-builds and, per the courts, not renovations. Germany caps instalments on consumer construction contracts at ninety percent of the price, with a five percent completion security owed to the homeowner. And the find of the week, from Finland: the consumer authority’s renovation guidance says to weight instalments toward the end of the project so payments follow the work. That is the guide’s entire argument, stated by a regulator. We added nothing to any of these; where a statute did not say it, neither do we.
The guide is live, the glossary gained a retention entry, and one true number waits in the research file for the shape that will let it back in.