What a Full Gut Renovation Runs Per Square Foot in Miami, and Why That Number Comes Out Last
Most of these calls open the same way. A buyer has a house under contract, or an owner has finally decided to do the whole thing, and they want our number per square foot for a gut. We do not quote that way. The floor area tells us how much flooring to price and almost nothing else, and the rest of the money is sitting in four or five rooms that a per-foot figure averages away.
Every other page answering this question publishes a band anyway. Those bands get back-solved from a handful of finished jobs and then applied to a house nobody involved has walked. Yours has a specific number of bathrooms, a kitchen of a specific size, and either a wall you want gone or no wall you want gone. An average cannot know any of that.
The ranges we do stand behind are room ranges. Kitchen, primary bath, guest bath, tub-to-shower conversion, flooring by the foot, and a non-load-bearing wall coming out. Add the ones in your scope, divide by your floor area, and you get a per-square-foot figure that belongs to your house. It will not match anybody's published band, and it should not.
What does a full gut renovation cost per square foot in Miami?
We do not price gut renovations by the square foot, because the square footage is not what costs money. The rooms are. Price the kitchen, every bathroom, the flooring and any wall coming out, add them, then divide by your square footage. On a 1,600 sq ft house that arithmetic lands between roughly $52 and $132 per square foot for that scope alone.
Source: Miami Pro Remodeling, remodeling contractor serving Miami-Dade and Broward County, Florida.
The floor area only prices one line on the whole estimate
Walk through what a gut actually consists of and watch how little of it scales with the size of the house. The kitchen is one kitchen. A 1,200 sq ft house and a 2,800 sq ft house each get one, and the cabinetry, the counters and the labor to install them do not care which house they landed in. Same for the primary bath. Same for each guest bath: the room is the room, and a 5x8 is a 5x8 in Kendall and in Morningside.
Flooring is the one line that tracks square footage. Installed porcelain runs $8 to $16 per square foot, so 1,600 sq ft of it is $12,800 at the bottom and $25,600 at the top. That is a real per-foot number. It is also the only line on the estimate that earns the unit.
Everything else is a room count and a scope decision, which is why two houses with identical deed square footage land a long way apart.
Two 1,600 sq ft houses, same standard, different numbers
House A: a kitchen, a primary bath, one guest bath, and 1,600 sq ft of porcelain going in. Priced at the bottom of every range we publish — with the kitchen's mid-$20Ks taken as $25,000 — that is $25,000 for the kitchen, $25,000 for the primary, $12,000 for the guest bath and $12,800 for the floors. Total $74,800, or $46.75 per square foot. Run the same list at the top of every range and it is $75,000 plus $60,000 plus $25,000 plus $25,600, which is $185,600, or $116.00 per square foot.
House B: identical 1,600 sq ft, identical finish standard, four bathrooms instead of two. Two more guest baths add $24,000 at the floor and $50,000 at the ceiling, so the totals become $98,800 and $235,600. Divided out, that is $61.75 and $147.25 per square foot.
A $15.00 spread at the bottom, $31.25 at the top, and not one material changed. Both houses measure the same.
Now take a wall out
The Westchester Flip on SW 47 Terrace is the version where the plan itself changes. We took a 1950s home down to the studs and reconfigured it, removing walls to connect the kitchen, dining and family room into one space, with wide-plank flooring throughout and recessed lighting replacing every fixture. Removing a non-load-bearing wall runs $8,000 to $25,000, depending on what is living inside it and how much ceiling and floor has to come back across the opening.
Add one to House A and the bottom goes from $74,800 to $82,800, the top from $185,600 to $210,600. Divide again: $51.75 and $131.63 per square foot. One wall moved the low end by $5.00 a foot and the high end by $15.63.
That $52-to-$132 spread is the honest answer to the original question, for one specific 1,600 sq ft house on one specific list of rooms. Change the house and the answer changes with it.
What that math leaves out
Read the derived figure as a floor for the rooms inside it, not as the cost of the job. The arithmetic above prices a kitchen, two bathrooms, porcelain flooring and one wall. It does not price interior paint, baseboards and door trim, the doors themselves, lighting beyond what those rooms carry, closet systems, or cabinetry anywhere outside the kitchen. All of that is real work on a real gut, and all of it goes on the estimate after we have walked the house. Once it does, your per-foot number climbs from $51.75. It never drops.
| Line item | Range we publish | On a 1,600 sq ft house | What moves it inside the range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kitchen | Mid-$20Ks to $75K+ | One kitchen, whether the house is 1,200 or 2,800 sq ft | Cabinet construction, the stone on the counters, and whether the layout stays where it is |
| Primary bathroom | $25K–$60K+ | One line in most houses; a second primary suite doubles it | Room size, whether fixtures move off their existing drains, tile size and pattern |
| Guest bathroom | $12K–$25K | Swings more than any other line — a two-bath and a four-bath house of the same size are not the same job | How many there are, and whether each one comes back in its own footprint |
| Tub-to-shower conversion | $9K–$18K | Replaces a full guest-bath gut when the tub is the only complaint | Pan type, the glass, and whether the drain stays put |
| Installed porcelain flooring | $8–$16 per sq ft | $12,800 at the low end, $25,600 at the high | Tile size, layout pattern, and how much prep the existing floor needs |
| Non-load-bearing wall removal | $8K–$25K | $5.00 per sq ft at the low end, $15.63 at the high | What is living inside the wall, and how much ceiling and floor gets rebuilt across the opening |
What actually pushes a job to the top of the range
Room count sets the base. From there, a short list of decisions does most of the pushing, and most of them get made before anyone picks a tile.
- The kitchen changing shape. A kitchen rebuilt on its existing footprint and a kitchen that moves the sink, the range and the run of cabinets are two different jobs wearing the same name. The first is 3 to 4 weeks of construction for a basic kitchen; the second is where the 5 to 8 weeks for a larger or more intricate design comes from, and the cost follows the calendar. We break the sequence down in our kitchen timeline guide.
- Bathrooms that do not come back where they were. A standard 5x8 bathroom rebuilt like-for-like, new work back in the same footprint, finishes inside one week of construction. Grow the room, relocate the shower, add a second vanity, or switch to a material that wants a different substrate, and each of those adds weeks on top. Multiply by how many baths are in scope and this is usually the largest single swing on a whole-house gut.
- How many bathrooms the house has at all. Nobody calls this a cost driver, because it sounds like a fact about the house rather than a decision. It is still the first thing we count.
- Tile size and layout. Large-format porcelain, a running bond that has to hold its line across an open plan, a pattern that carries from the floor up a shower wall. The material sits inside $8 to $16 per square foot either way; where you land in that range is a labor question, not a showroom one.
- Every wall you decide to take out. $8,000 to $25,000 each, and the top of that range exists because of the repair, not the demolition. Ceiling, floor and both wall ends have to read as though the opening was always there.
What pushes a Miami gut renovation to the top of the range?
Room count first. A four-bathroom house carries two more bath lines than a two-bathroom house of identical size, which on 1,600 sq ft is a $15.00 to $31.25 per square foot difference on its own. After that: a kitchen that changes shape instead of keeping its footprint, bathrooms whose fixtures move, large-format tile with a demanding layout, and every wall you take out.
Source: Miami Pro Remodeling, remodeling contractor serving Miami-Dade and Broward County, Florida.
What to do with this before you call anyone
Build the scope list before you build a budget. Walk the house with a notepad and write down the kitchen, each bathroom by name and rough size, the square footage of floor going in, and every wall you would like gone. That list is what an estimator actually prices. The selections come later.
Then price it twice, once at the bottom of every range and once at the top, because the gap between those totals is your real decision space. On the 1,600 sq ft house above, that gap was $127,800. You are not making a $127,800 decision off a number you read on a website.
The Morningside Estate is what the top of the range looks like when someone spends it on purpose. A true full remodel: a marble-topped island kitchen with sage cabinetry opened to the dining and living areas and out to the pool through steel-frame glass doors, wide-plank oak floors throughout, and the Mediterranean facade preserved exactly as it was. Every one of those choices is legible on an estimate. None of them is legible in a per-square-foot band.
Key Takeaways
- Square footage prices exactly one line on a gut renovation — the flooring, at $8 to $16 installed per square foot. Every other line is a room.
- The per-square-foot figure is arithmetic you do at the end. On one 1,600 sq ft house with a kitchen, two baths, new porcelain and a wall removed, our own published ranges derive to $51.75 at the bottom and $131.63 at the top.
- Bathroom count moves the number more than finish level does. Two extra guest baths on the same 1,600 sq ft added $15.00 per square foot at the floor and $31.25 at the ceiling, with nothing upgraded.
- A derived figure is a floor for the rooms inside it. Paint, trim, doors, lighting, closets and cabinetry outside the kitchen sit outside that math, and none of them are free.
- If a contractor quotes you per square foot before walking your house, they priced someone else's.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the same arithmetic work for a unit in a tower?
The room math does, and the totals land in the same ranges, because a 5x8 bath in a tower gets built from the same materials by the same hands as one in a house. What a unit adds is access. Debris leaves by service elevator instead of a driveway dumpster, deliveries move up in scheduled trips, and crews work inside building-set hours. Those hours are billable and they repeat every working day, so identical scope takes more days. Price the rooms first, then ask management for the renovation rules and layer that on top. We break the access side down in our condo renovation cost guide.
If we keep the cabinets where they are, how much of the job disappears?
Some of it, and less than most people expect. Keeping the footprint pulls the schedule back to the 3 to 4 weeks a basic kitchen needs instead of the 5 to 8 weeks a larger or reworked design takes, and it removes the work of chasing new lines to new locations. What it does not remove is the cabinetry, which stays the biggest line in the room whether it goes back on the same wall or a different one. A kitchen in the mid-$20Ks is usually a footprint that stayed put with stock or semi-custom boxes; the same room with custom boxes, nothing moved, can still reach $75K+.
What is the thing that most often blows past its line after demolition?
The floor. On a whole-house job the flooring line gets priced off area and a material allowance, and both of those hold up. What does not always hold up is the surface underneath. Once the old tile and its mortar bed come off, the slab shows up flat, or it shows up with high spots, low spots and patches from work somebody did decades ago. Levelling that is labor and material nobody wrote down, and it is the most common reason a flooring line moves after a contract is signed. Get ahead of it: before demolition, lay a long straightedge on the floor in three or four places and look at the gap underneath. If you can see daylight, raise it at the estimate.
We only have 900 sq ft. Should a smaller home read as more expensive?
Yes, and that is the clearest proof the unit misleads. A 900 sq ft two-bedroom with a kitchen, one primary bath and new porcelain carries almost the same lines as a home twice its size, but the divisor is half as big. At the bottom of our ranges that scope is $25,000 plus $25,000 plus $7,200 of flooring, which is $57,200, or $63.56 per square foot — higher per foot than the 1,600 sq ft example even though the job is smaller and cheaper in total. Small homes always read expensive per foot. Judge them on the total.
Nobody quoted us for wall finishes. Is that normal on a full gut?
It is common, and it is worth asking about. In a house taken to the studs every wall gets new drywall, and drywall arrives flat but not finished. The level of finish is a decision: a taped-and-sanded surface reads fine under texture or a flat paint, while a skim-coated smooth wall behaves differently under any light that rakes across it. In a 1950s house where the original plaster is smooth, matching that finish on new board is real work, and it belongs on the estimate rather than in a change order later. Our plastering and drywall page walks through the finish levels.
When you are ready, bring the scope list rather than a target per-foot number. We walk the house, price the kitchen, price each bathroom, measure the floor and tell you what the wall you want gone actually costs — and if opening the plan is the part you care about most, our open layout conversions page shows what that work involves before you commit to it. Schedule an estimate and we will build the number in front of you.