From my experience, it’s usually a combination of factors rather than just one thing. Soil conditions can definitely push the cost higher, especially if standard solutions won’t work and you need a more advanced setup. Access to the site also matters — if equipment can’t easily get in, that adds labor time. In our case, we also had to budget for permits, inspections, and a bit of redesign after the initial evaluation. So yeah, it’s rarely a fixed number, more like a flexible range depending on the situation.

Funny enough, I’ve been seeing more and more discussions about property prep lately, especially with people moving a bit outside big cities. It feels like a lot of these “hidden steps” in construction don’t really get talked about until you run into them yourself. Even things like permits or groundwork can turn into a whole project on their own. Always interesting to read how others deal with it.