Several of you, including Polgardi, have asked how much to expect to pay for building works etc. So I thought I would do a quick "rough guide" to give you an idea.

A local labourer: £15-20/day
A local tradesman £40-50/day

There are certain jobs which have a pixed price and work out far higher than the day rate: to have a new electricity meter and supply installed - which takes the Master electrician all of 2-3 hours, costs £200-250

Remember, many Hungarian tradesmen do not include "clearing up" in their quote and may charge extra for this.

To further give you an idea of what you should be paying, I will list some of the more typical jobs - obviously if you are in Budapest, prices are going to be higher - in other areas, if you are being quoted in excess of these prices; look for other quotes!

Rewire a 2 bedroom house, new consumer unit, upgrade of ampage - £1,200
New guttering, downpipes and brackets; standard 2 bed house - £700
French drainage system around property - £600
To replace the electric water heater, new shower, toilet and hand basin, new plumbing in bathroom - £1,000 - £1,500 depending on fittings

Obviously, every job is different and depending on your trades person, they may charge for petrol, removal of rubble, clean up etc but hopefully these will give you an idea of what you should be paying.

This is so helpful, thank you very much.

Yes, thanks for this. If you are left with building rubble etc, are there places like council tips where you can dump it?

Yes, there are places for rubble disposal, also, many smaller villages have an area at the end of the village for disposal of garden waste and certain types of construction waste.

This is not strictly on prices but more on service - watch out for delay if you need a new electricity supply to an isolated house.

It was fine to persuade the neighbouring land owner to sign the forms giving consent for cables to go above or in our case under their ground, but when it gets to e.on you can be in for a long delay -

They take the money to do the job, & in the small print talk of a year to complete it. Then the fun starts. We have been waiting 7 months & yesterday e.on confirmed that there are still many hurdles to clear before they can even put the job out to a contractor - who will add it to his list.

To be fair we have a temporary supply fixed up by them and a 100 meter cable running overland so building work can be done - but it has to be unplugged & put away each night.

We have found that when they say, up to a year , they certainly mean it.

Ouch, that's a frustrating amount of time to wait! Is it for your summer house?
Even just upgrading the supply can be a 3-8 week wait depending on the increase and how busy they are.

In my village - (so may not happen everywhere)
my neighbours and i have found that if you leave rubble, furniture, metal pipes etc outside on the grass verge, someone always comes along and takes it away for some reason or other. We have discovered that rubble is oftenused to fill potholes in the village, of for foundations of pathe etc. a very good way of re-cyling, instead of going to rubbish sites or landfill as in the UK.

You seem knowledgeable on the trades, do you also have knowledge of builders wanting to purchase land at Lake Balaton, I have a plot I would like to sell.

2 years later than original post.
I have just had a professional to lay 42 square metres of tiles, (800 kilos worth)
2 men (the tiler and a labourer) for 3 days. total cost 73,000ft
so it would appear cost have not risen much if at all in two years.
and it was very good quality work, and he will return when i finally have a kitchen to tile.
I am also having 4 wooden doors and 13 wooden windows replaced with modern upvc double glazed units for an unbelievable 539,000ft, all promised to be fitted in one day.
when i queried the one day to fit all of them they explained there will be 12 men to do the work, so labour is still cheap!

Certainley is!

Gentlemen, what about going rates for interior sanding and painting of the walls (without repair or plaster job)? I'd appreciate if you could give me an idea: sort of a price fork.
Thank you.

P.S. I've received a few outrageous quotes, so I am curious how overpriced they were.

Probably a bad time to reply to this having spent the night wading through some ludicrous quotes!!!!

Prices really do vary, as does quality of work. Closer to the lake is more expensive, Budapest more expensive still, villages cheaper though not if there are a lot of Germans or Austrians as many will have been paying over the odds for years and as a foreigner, you will be expected to as well.

We are too far away so no personal interest in this but will try and help.
Sqm of walls? Sanding, just walls or window returns as well, any pillars alcoves etc? Are the walls newly plastered? Furniture to be moved, dust sheets required? What type of paint?

Interesting this thread should come up today!

My walls were painted previously with some horrible lime wash distemper which sucks the colour out of any paint applied over it, leaving a streaky horrible finish.

Yesterday I had a professional in to give me advice, which was that the only solution was to sand and seal the walls, for one room 5x3 metres the price was 75,000 fts!!!
This seemed totally ludicrous, so I asked other decorators and it seems this price is considered reasonable......well not to me!

Needless to say I am now looking at wallpapering instead!

I'm just in the process of sanding and scrubbing the walls and ceiling of my bathroom so I know it is a time consuming job. The tall ceilings (9' 7" in my house) mean there's a lot of extra wall area. It is not skilled work so my solution for jobs like that is usually to get volunteers from HelpX or Workaway. It then only costs me their food, laundry etc.

Yes, that is a ludicrous price. You could have it plastered and sealed for less than that. If professional, won't be done by hand and will be completed in one day.