Ask a portfolio operator what a make-ready costs them per unit and you will usually get a number. Ask them why it is 40% higher in one market than another and the answer gets vague.
The vagueness is not a data problem. It is a definition problem, and it is almost universal.
The same word, different work
In most portfolios, each market has its own contractor, and each contractor has their own idea of what a make-ready includes.
One includes subfloor repair in the standard turn. Another prices it separately. One replaces fixtures as a matter of course; another cleans them and replaces on failure. One hauls debris the same day; another stages it and charges a separate haul.
None of those contractors is wrong. They are each internally consistent. But it means your $2,400 market and your $3,400 market are not 40% apart on price — they are buying different work, and nobody can tell you how much of the gap is scope and how much is cost.
Why this is expensive rather than merely annoying
Three consequences follow, and they compound.
You cannot find the overpriced market. The whole reason to compare cost per unit across a portfolio is to spot where you are paying too much. If the scopes differ, the comparison cannot do that, so the analysis gets done and then quietly ignored.
You cannot forecast. A budget built on a blended per-unit figure across markets with different scopes is built on an average of unlike things. It will be wrong in both directions and you will not know which.
Your good contractors look expensive. The contractor who includes subfloor repair in the standard turn produces a higher per-unit number than the one who excludes it and adds it later. On a spreadsheet the thorough one looks worse.
That last one is the real cost, because it actively selects against the vendor you want.
The fix, in order
1. Write down what a make-ready is
Not a paragraph. A list, item by item, including what is not in it. The exclusions do more work than the inclusions — belly wrap, roof work, full deck replacement, leveling, abatement and appliances all belong outside a standard turn, because pricing them inside one is how a make-ready budget becomes a remodel budget without anyone deciding to spend the money.
Ours is published at scopes and unit pricing, which is unusual and deliberate: a published scope is one you can hold us to.
2. Make every contractor bid against it
Not their scope. Yours. If a contractor cannot price against a written definition, that is information.
3. Ask for an itemized quote
Every scope line priced on its own, per unit. Not one blended figure.
An itemized quote is a small ask that changes what your data can tell you: when a market is more expensive, you can see immediately which scope lines moved. A blended number tells you there is a gap and nothing about what to do about it.
4. Price exceptions separately
Some homes in every community will not fit the standard scope. Price those as their own scope rather than averaging them into the community number.
Averaging produces a total that is right on the day it is signed and wrong by the third unit — and it means the per-unit number you were given is not the number you actually pay on the units that fit.
What good looks like
You should be able to say: a standard single-wide make-ready costs us between X and Y across the portfolio, the variance comes from these scope lines, and the three markets above the band are above it for these reasons.
If you cannot say that, the problem is upstream of your contractors.