In Today’s Market, Should You Build New or Renovate?
A year or so ago at the height of our real estate boom, we published a blog article entitled “Building New vs Large Scale Renovations.” The main point of that article was that it took a bit of research to determine which of the two choices would be better – major home renovations or a total teardown and rebuild.
However at that time, regardless of any research, the majority of our client projects were mostly rebuilds. And it made total sense.
Rebuilds were popular a few years ago
When someone spends $2 million for a 33-foot-wide piece of dirt, they don’t want a rundown 1950s bungalow on there. They don’t even want to consider renovating it. They just want a new house. So we built them one.
But now that prices have leveled off and things are slowing down, more people are looking again to renovations. It appears the reason for this is that homeowners are finding extra value in a renovation. More times than not, a renovation can bring more value dollar for dollar than a new build.
Now renovations are back
So with the market somewhat stabilized, it’s a great time to look at renovations or even a new build because there are more trades available. They are not as busy.
Also, over the last few years, the prices for all the materials and sub-trades were constantly going up, up, up, up. Now that things are slowing down, the prices are coming back down a bit.
So which is the right choice?
So now the question of renovating versus new build takes on more importance.
And that is something Kerr Construction and Design can help you with.
We can do some of the research we suggested in our previous blog article.
We’ll find out how high your basement is, what the drainage is like, where the load bearing walls are, and all those important questions.
Then we call tell you straight-up what would it cost to do a full renovation and what would it cost to do a new build. We’ll tell you the advantages and disadvantages of both.
And surprise! It might be a renovation right now.