Nobody prices foundation repair by the house. It’s priced by the pier, which is why “how much does foundation repair cost” has no useful answer until somebody has surveyed your floor and counted how many you need.

Here’s what the numbers actually look like in McKinney, and more importantly, what makes them move.

The per-pier numbers

Method	Per pier	Where it’s used
Pressed concrete piling	$350 – $600	Standard for most North Texas slab homes
Steel piling	$600 – $1,200	Deep refusal, heavy loads, uncertain fill
Helical pier	$900 – $1,800	Light structures, additions, limited access
Drilled bell-bottom pier	$800 – $1,600	Engineer-specified, new construction

Multiply by pier count and you have the bulk of the bid. A typical McKinney tract home needing perimeter work on two sides lands somewhere between twelve and twenty piers, which is why $7,000 to $15,000 is the range most people end up in.

What moves the number

• Interior piers. The single biggest jump. An interior pier means cutting flooring, breaking through the slab, working inside the house, then patching concrete and restoring finishes. Budget two to three times an exterior pier, and understand that flooring replacement is usually your cost, not the contractor’s.
• Depth to refusal. Piers go down until they hit something that holds. Across McKinney that’s usually twelve to eighteen feet, but near creek beds and in newer fill it can run considerably deeper. Some contractors quote a fixed depth and charge for extra segments; ask which you’re getting.
• Access. A pier on an open side yard is cheap. The same pier behind a pool, under a deck, or against a zero-lot-line fence is not.
• Hardscape in the way. Patios, walkways, and driveway sections that have to be cut and replaced add real money.
• Plumbing. If a hydrostatic test finds a leak, that gets fixed before piering, and tunneling under a slab to reach a line runs $150 to $250 per linear foot on its own.
• Engineering. A structural engineer’s report is $400 to $900, paid separately.

Why three bids can differ by $14,000

This happens constantly and it unsettles people, understandably. Usually it’s one of four things.

Different pier counts. One contractor proposes eight piers on the worst corner. Another proposes thirty-one around the entire perimeter. Both are looking at the same elevation survey. The first is treating the problem; the second is treating the possibility of a problem. Ask each of them to point at the survey and explain why that pier is on the plan.

Different methods. Steel at $900 a pier versus pressed concrete at $450 doubles the bid before pier count enters into it. Sometimes steel is genuinely warranted. Sometimes it’s the upsell.

What’s excluded. The cheap bid may not include plumbing testing, engineering, permits, hardscape restoration, or landscaping repair. Get every bid to state its exclusions in writing and the spread often collapses.

Volume operators. Some of the largest firms working Collin County carry heavy advertising and sales overhead and price accordingly. That isn’t automatically bad — scale buys you a company likely to still exist when you need the warranty honored — but you’re paying for it.

The cheapest bid isn’t always the mistake people say it is

Contractors love telling you not to go with the low bid. Sometimes the low bid is just a smaller company with lower overhead proposing fewer piers because fewer piers are needed.

What actually separates good from bad isn’t price. It’s whether the scope is specific — pier locations marked on a drawing, depth methodology stated, lift target defined, exclusions listed — and whether the warranty is legible and transferable. A vague $6,000 bid is worse than a specific $11,000 one. A specific $6,000 bid may be exactly right.

If the spread still bothers you, spend the $400 to $900 on an independent structural engineer. Their pier plan settles the argument, and you’ll often save more than the report cost.

Costs people forget to budget

• Drywall and paint repair after the lift — $500 to $3,000
• Tile and flooring replacement over interior pier locations
• Door re-hanging and adjustment — several doors usually need it
• Irrigation repair where lines were in the excavation path
• Landscaping and sod that doesn’t survive
• Drainage correction, which most people should do and many skip

Does insurance cover any of it?

Almost never. Standard Texas homeowners policies exclude earth movement, and soil-related settling is earth movement. The exception worth chasing is foundation damage caused by a covered event — most commonly a plumbing leak under the slab. That’s why a hydrostatic test is worth running before you assume the cause and before you spend anything on piers.

What to do first

Get an elevation survey. It’s free from most contractors here, it takes an hour, and it converts an open-ended worry into a number you can compare bids against. A meaningful share of people who run one find out they don’t need piers at all — they need a downspout moved and a watering schedule.