Unit-Cost Sources for Property Condition Assessments: What E2018 Allows and What Licences Forbid

Every opinion of cost in a PCR has to come from somewhere, and the guide asks the report to say where. That is straightforward for a firm with its own cost files. It becomes a licensing question the moment the source is a commercial database, because the most familiar one forbids exactly this use.

What the guide accepts

E2018-24 lists six acceptable bases for unit costs: costs provided by the user; the owner's historical experience; the consultant's own cost database or cost files; commercially available published cost information; third-party costs from contractors, vendors or suppliers; and other qualified sources. It asks that each line carry approximate quantity, unit and unit cost, allows lump sums where necessary, and limits the figures to construction costs, excluding design, fees and general conditions unless the user wants them added. Fannie Mae's Form 4099 instructions go one step further for agency work and require every cost estimate to reference its source.

So the question is not whether a firm may use its own numbers (it may, and the third basis exists for that) but which published sources it may lawfully put behind them.

RSMeans: usable by a person at a desk, not by a condition-assessment practice

RSMeans Data Online is the reference most engineers learned on. Its published terms of use, however, are written for estimators, and they contain restrictions that matter here. Read them before relying on the data in a PCA practice; in summary, the subscription terms prohibit combining the data with other software or programs, accessing it by automated means, using it to train or feed AI tools, and, in the estimating-data terms, using the data or the estimates derived from it to provide facility condition assessment services to third parties, or as a component of any product offered for sale. Whether an individual PCA falls under "facility condition assessment services" is a question for the licensee's counsel, but the text is not encouraging, and pasting an RSMeans line into any AI tool is a stated breach.

Large national firms list Marshall & Swift and RSMeans as their basis because they hold negotiated enterprise data licences. A five-person firm on a retail subscription does not have those rights.

Craftsman: licensed for software, on request

Craftsman Book Company licenses its cost data explicitly for incorporation in software: the National Construction Estimator, the repair and remodeling data and the trade databases are available by API or as database files, with area modifiers and quarterly updates, under a written data licence priced on request. That is the realistic route for a firm or a vendor that wants a published basis inside a tool. The printed books carry a separate licence that treats the data as trade secret, so a book cannot simply be typed into a spreadsheet and redistributed.

Public sources that are genuinely free

Two public sources cover useful life, not unit cost, and both belong in every report's methodology:

• HUD's estimated useful life table for the CNA e-Tool is a United States government work, in the public domain, and organised by the E2018 system outline. It is the natural EUL source for non-agency work.
• Fannie Mae's Form 4099.F useful-life table is published for consultants' use on agency multifamily work, with separate columns by property type. Cite it by name; do not reproduce it wholesale in a product without asking.

Neither Fannie Mae nor HUD publishes unit costs. The consultant supplies them and cites the source, which returns the question to the firm's own library.

Building the firm's library

The third basis in the guide, the consultant's own cost files, is where most small firms already are, whether or not they call it that. A usable library has, for each line: a stable key, a description, a unit, a low, mid and high figure, and a source string that says where the mid figure came from (a 2026 bid, a contractor quote, a licensed database entry, a prior project's actual). Regional adjustment is a column, not a guess. Every report then cites the library and the line's source, and the library improves with each job.

Public documents help calibrate an order of magnitude. Three published PCRs from 2019 to 2025 print unit costs for asphalt overlay, seal coat and striping, single-ply roofing, rooftop units per ton, fire alarm panels, elevator modernisation, carpet and ceiling tile. Facts in a public document can inform a firm's own judgment; they are not a licence to copy a database.

What to print in the report

The cost methodology should name the source in the guide's terms ("the consultant's cost files, updated 2026" or "unit costs licensed from Craftsman National Construction Estimator, 2026 edition, with area modifiers"), and each line should carry quantity, unit and unit cost so the arithmetic is checkable. Where the source is a placeholder or a figure the engineer has not confirmed, say so; a lender's reviewer would rather read "engineer to verify" than find out later.

How Baseline PCR handles unit costs

The product ships a small placeholder unit-cost table calibrated to published assessments and marked as a placeholder in every report that uses it. The firm replaces it, row by row or entirely, in settings; each row carries the firm's source string, and the report cites that string on every line. No RSMeans data is used or accepted. The useful-life values come from the HUD table with the Fannie 4099.F value carried alongside. The reviewer can override any unit cost on any line, and the basis sheet prints the arithmetic and the source for each; the sample report shows it.