DEMOLITION: SELECTIVE DEMO IS A DIFFERENT BUSINESS THAN FULL TEARDOWN
Full structural demo runs $9 to $22 per square foot by building class in 2026; selective interior demo is hand labor, protection, and dust control around occupied or preserved space. One blended cost history misprices both.
This page covers one problem. The full picture for this trade, including the other places margin leaks, is on the demolition operating system page.
WHERE THE MONEY GOES.
Covered in full in the quick answer above. The sourced numbers and what controls it are below.
THE COST, SOURCED.
warehouse/light industrial $9-15/SF, retail $11-18/SF, Class B/C office $14-22/SF full structural (BidFlow 2026); frame type drives it (wood $4-8/SF, concrete/masonry $8-16/SF).
THE NUMBER TO MEASURE IT AGAINST.
Demolition contractors run about % net profit at $1M to $5M, rising to roughly 7% at $5M to $10M. The CFOS target at $1M to $5M is10%, set at 10 percent before taxes or 3.5 points better than your trade's average at your revenue, whichever is higher. A problem like this one lives in the distance between those two figures rather than in a loss on any single job.
Gross margin over the same bands runs % to 22%, against a CFOS target of 10%.
THE SYSTEM THAT FIXES THIS.
Cost codes built against the estimate, so a job can be read while it runs.
