Preparing to sell · what it costs What this work actually costs — and why the list is not a plan.
Nine of the jobs sellers are most often quoted for, at Peninsula prices, with the source and the year behind each one. $525 to $25,000 for a typical job, and a great deal depends on which of them you do not do.
Read this first
This is a price list. It is not a to-do list.
Every other page like this one is a checklist — replace the roof, paint the outside, redo the garden — with a total at the bottom. That page is written by people who sell the work.
On a Palo Alto house, several of the most expensive items below are frequently the wrong thing to do. A roof with life left in it is usually worth disclosing rather than replacing: a buyer who knows it has eight years left prices that in at a fraction of what a new roof costs. Termite work beyond what a report requires is routinely done and routinely wasted. A full landscape redesign almost never returns what it costs on a house that is about to change hands.
Maggie will argue against some of this work on most houses. Which items, and why, depends entirely on the house, the street and the week it launches — and that judgment is the thing she is actually hired for. The prices are published here because they are just prices, and a seller planning a budget should not have to guess at them.
Peninsula prices
Nine jobs, on one scale.
Ranges, not estimates. The widest of them — termite clearance (section 1) — runs from $800 to $30,000, and no honest version of this page flattens that into a single number.
- Roof replacement composition shingle, 2,000–2,500 sq ft house$15k $25k typical $38k
- Exterior painting 2,500 sq ft house, prep plus two coats$11.3k $16.5k typical $25k
- Interior painting whole house, 2,500 sq ft, walls and ceilings, two coats$7.5k $13k typical $22.5k
- Hardwood floor refinishing sand and refinish, 2,500 sq ft of floor$7.5k $12k typical $20k
- Landscaping refresh roughly 7,000 sq ft lot — clean-up, planting, mulch, irrigation repair$1.5k $4.5k typical $12k
- Termite clearance (Section 1) treatment and repair, single-family home$800 $4k typical $30k
- Power washing driveway, walkways and house exterior$450 $900 typical $1.8k
- Deep clean 2,500 sq ft house, pre-listing standard$500 $850 typical $1.5k
- Window cleaning inside and out, typical single-family home$250 $525 typical $1.2k
What moves each one
The number is never the number.
Every quote on this list has one or two variables doing most of the work. Knowing which is how you read a bid.
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Roof replacement
composition shingle, 2,000–2,500 sq ft house
$15,000 – $38,000 typically about $25,000
Material is the biggest driver: concrete or clay tile runs roughly twice composition, standing-seam metal about 1.8 times. After that it is pitch, how many layers have to come off, rotted decking at $75–150 a sheet, and city permit fees, which run $500–$2,000 on the Peninsula.
2026 · Bay Area figures · Hamilton Exteriors — Bay Area roof costs , ViewPoint Roofing
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Interior painting
whole house, 2,500 sq ft, walls and ceilings, two coats
$7,500 – $22,500 typically about $13,000
Sources disagree by about half — $3–6 a square foot across the Bay Area against $5–9 quoted for Palo Alto specifically. Ceilings, wallpaper removal (which can double a job), drywall repair, and whether the house is occupied all move it.
2025–26 · Bay Area figures · GreatBuildz — Bay Area painting costs , Homeyou — Palo Alto interior painting
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Exterior painting
2,500 sq ft house, prep plus two coats
$11,250 – $25,000 typically about $16,500
Preparation is most of the cost and most of the variation — scraping, priming bare wood, replacing trim. Stucco, board-and-batten and shingle all price differently, and a second story adds staging time.
2026 · Bay Area figures · Facade Colorizer — San Francisco exterior painting 2026 , GreatBuildz — Bay Area painting costs
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Termite clearance (Section 1)
treatment and repair, single-family home
$800 – $30,000 typically about $4,000
The widest range on this page by a distance, and the sources are not close: Bay Area tenting is quoted anywhere from $1,500–$4,000 by local operators to $5,400–$9,200 by statewide guides. Repair is the real variable — minor work runs $600–$3,000, while sill plate, subfloor or joist damage runs $10,000–$30,000 and up. The inspection itself is $150–$300, and often free outside escrow.
2026 · Bay Area figures · Termite Treatment Price — California , Custom Home — Bay Area termite repair
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Landscaping refresh
roughly 7,000 sq ft lot — clean-up, planting, mulch, irrigation repair
$1,500 – $12,000 typically about $4,500
Three different products get called landscaping. A clean-up — cut back, weed, haul away — is $500–$2,500. This refresh tier is the usual listing answer. A redesign with grading, hardscape and new irrigation starts around $15,000 and passes $75,000 without difficulty. Irrigation repair alone is $200–$1,500, and crews bill $50–$100 an hour.
2026 · Bay Area figures · Landscape Associates — San Jose landscaping costs
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Hardwood floor refinishing
sand and refinish, 2,500 sq ft of floor
$7,500 – $20,000 typically about $12,000
Two different jobs share the name. A screen-and-recoat is $1.50–$2.50 a square foot; a full sand to bare wood is $3–$8. And most 2,500 square foot Peninsula houses have only 1,500–1,800 square feet of actual hardwood, so the real invoice is usually well under the figure above.
2026 · Bay Area figures · 9Builders — Bay Area hardwood refinishing
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Deep clean
2,500 sq ft house, pre-listing standard
$500 – $1,500 typically about $850
A pre-listing clean is closer to a move-out clean than a regular one — inside cabinets, appliances, window tracks, garage. The cheapest quote and the most expensive are usually quoting different scopes.
2026 · Bay Area figures · Green Planet — Bay Area house cleaning costs
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Power washing
driveway, walkways and house exterior
$450 – $1,800 typically about $900
Concrete, pavers and wood all take different pressure and different time. A driveway on its own is usually a few hundred dollars.
Bay Area data from 2024 — add roughly five to ten percent for 2026.
2024 · Bay Area figures · HomeBlue — Bay Area pressure washing
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Window cleaning
inside and out, typical single-family home
$250 – $1,200 typically about $525
Priced per window, $8–$16, with second-story windows at $10–$40 each. Screens and tracks are extra and are usually where a quote grows. Most firms have a $100–$250 minimum.
Regional data from 2024, blended with 2026 national rates.
2024–26 · national figures, adjusted for this market · HomeGuide — window cleaning prices , HomeBlue — San Jose window cleaning
Before any of it
What it costs to find out whether you need to.
Inspections are not preparation work. They are what tells you whether preparation work is needed — which is a different decision, and the cheapest money on this page.
| Inspection | Typical | Up to |
|---|---|---|
| General home inspection $855 for 2,001–2,500 sq ft, rising to $1,055 at 4,500 | $855 | $1,055 |
| Termite / wood-destroying organism report $555 for 2,001–2,500 sq ft, rising to $675 at 4,500 | $555 | $675 |
| Roof inspection Free if the roofer is bidding competitively for the work | $295 | flat fee |
| Sewer lateral camera Waived if the repairs are then ordered | $295 | flat fee |
| Natural hazard disclosure report $79 ordered alongside an inspection | $99 | flat fee |
| Chimney Not a HomeGuard service; a Level 2 inspection is the upper end | $225 | $500 |
Billed prices from the HomeGuard Incorporated — 2026 Bay Area price sheet, covering Santa Clara, San Mateo, Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin and Sonoma counties. Each line is $40 less when it is paid at the time of service.
Ordered together
Termite and home inspection, plus one of roof, sewer lateral or pool comes to $1,505 on a 2,001–2,500 sq ft house — against $1,745 bought line by line. $1,425 on the smallest houses, $1,825 at 4,500 square feet.
A pre-listing inspection costs a few hundred dollars and routinely saves a five-figure decision — because the most expensive work on this page is the work done without knowing whether it was needed.
One thing that is not on this page
Staging, because you do not pay for it.
Staging is the item sellers most expect to find on a list like this, and it is missing because it is inside Maggie’s fee — along with preparation management, photography, advertising and the events. Premium, properly specified, for the whole listing period.
The work above is third-party: roofers, painters, pest companies. Those are the seller’s costs with any agent, which is exactly why they are published and why the fee page names them too.
And one that belongs somewhere else
Closing costs are a separate bill.
Everything above is what the trades charge before the house goes on the market. Transfer tax, escrow, title and the state’s withholding at closing are a different set of numbers entirely — and in Palo Alto the transfer tax alone is the one most sellers have never heard of until it appears on a settlement statement.
Why national figures are no use here
Everything on this page costs more here, and nobody agrees how much more.
Estimates of the Bay Area premium over national trade costs range from about 15 percent to about 55 percent, depending who is counting. Turner & Townsend put San Francisco construction labor roughly 55 percent above the North American average in 2025; large renovation platforms say 30 to 50; Bay Area contractors themselves often say 15 to 25.
That is a threefold disagreement, so the sensible reading is a rule of thumb rather than a multiplier: labor-heavy work — painting, landscaping, cleaning, refinishing — runs well above national figures, while material-heavy work like roofing runs closer to them, because materials price nationally and labor does not.
Turner & Townsend — Global Construction Market Intelligence 2025 · Block Renovation — Bay Area renovation costs
The money is in the decisions, not the prices.
Anybody can get three bids. What changes the number at the end is which of these jobs your house actually needs — and on most houses that is a shorter list than the one above.
Or read whether to do any of it — including how to fund the work without paying until escrow closes.
About these figures
- Compiled September 28, 2026 from published regional cost data. Each item above carries its own year and its own source; where a figure rests on older data, the entry says so.
- Ranges, never quotes. Nothing here is an estimate for any particular house, and no contractor is recommended or named on this page.
- Where sources disagree, both are shown. Termite clearance and interior painting are the two where the spread is wide enough to matter.
Maggie Ma · DRE #02117367 · Keller Williams Palo Alto
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