Addition or New Custom Home

Should I add an addition or additions and renovate my home or should I tear it down and build a brand new custom home where the old one once was?

This is a question that I get asked a lot by people, especially these days with the real estate market being so tight and it becoming harder and harder to find homes/chalets/cottages. In our area we also have people deciding to retire and move permanently to the area, they have to decide if they can live in their chalet/cottage and can they make it a proper home which usually means making significant changes to it.

What this really comes down too is a matter of money.

If you can afford to build yourself a new custom home then you should do it, adding an addition to it and renovating the rest of the place should be a last resort.

Why should it be a last resort? Well if you remove the matter of money, then what you need to focus on is what you are giving up by just adding an addition;

• An addition is never as much space as you want it too be. There are many reasons for this but the main one is that you are adding more square footage to a side or sides of your current home, that basically creates two living spaces, the new addition and the old home.
• Usually when people are adding to their existing home its an older home. Older homes are a lot different in layout and the way that they used space then modern homes. Older homes are cut up with individual rooms, this makes the space harder to use and also makes the home feel smaller. Modern homes are more open with as little walls separating the rooms as possible. This gives the feeling of more space and also allows a space to be more of a flex space.
• Older homes require extensive renovations to be brought up to an energy efficiency when comparing them to newer homes. 
• No matter how you tie the new addition to the old home and rearrange the inside living space its hard to make the new addition blend in to the old home, it will never look like one continuous home, it will look like a house that had an addition added to it.
• So things in an older home are not easy to upgrade or re-furbish. Waterproofing around the outside of the home is one, to replace the waterproofing you are basically digging up the entire yard around the home.

No matter what you want to do it all does come back to money.

Renovating and adding an addition will always be cheaper then tearing it down and building a new custom home, but the the costs need to be put into context.

In today's real estate market a new home is going to be worth more money then an older home that had an addition added to it.

The renovation/addition is cheaper but is still expensive, you sacrifice a lot to save money and not as much as you think.

New custom homes are exactly what you want, in fact the new home could be smaller square footage wise but have more usable space inside. The smaller new home brings the price difference closer to the costs of renovation/additions with the added benefits that it is a modern new home.

Whatever you decide reno/addition or new custom home remember that its a lot of money not to get exactly what you want.

Rob Abbott

Great Lakes Custom Homes Inc.

Additions Not As Simple As You Think

With the real estate market in the Georgian Bay area continuing to run hot with little on the market and what is for sale selling quickly, more and more people are turning to building additions onto their existing home or chalet that they already own.

This can be a good idea for resale as any improvements made to an existing home will only raise the value of the home in the eyes of potential buyers. In fact the return on these investments will usually raise the value of your home or chalet more then you will spend on the project.

But there are a lot of things that you need to understand if you want to add an addition on to your home or chalet, its sometimes not as simple as you think.

Here are some of the things that you have to be aware of when wanting to add an addition to your existing home or chalet;

1. Costs. Putting an addition onto your home is not cheap and can even be more expensive sometimes then if you were building a new home (when you look at the per sqft cost). Tying the new part of the house together with the old part can eat up a good portion of the budget depending on the design.
2. Renovations. Most people think about adding an addition and the cost but they don't realize that they will probably end up renovating a large part of the existing home because the addition changes how the home functions and its new which points out all the flaws and warn out parts of the older part of the home.If you don't put money in your budget for renovations of the existing home you will be sorry.
3. Permits. Sometimes getting a permit for an addition is not as easy as you think it is. Most townships now require extensive planning on your part as the homeowner before they will give you permission to build. These can include; surveys, engineered grading plans, engineered soil tests, septic reviews, lot coverage surveys, energy audits, a variance, storm water management plans. 
4. TimeLines. Building an addition is a lot like building a new home, the time it takes to build an addition can take almost as long as it takes to build yourself a new home. Even though its a smaller project in scale it takes the same amount of tradesmen.
5. Neighbours. People usually get along with their neighbours at some level, but put up a construction project beside someone for 6 to 9 months and the best relationships start to wear thin. Be prepared for backlash from your neighbours from the start. Also be prepared for an argument over the lot lines and the setbacks. People never understand how close you are legally allowed to build to the property line.
6. Compromise. One of the things that you will have to understand is that when you are adding an addition to an existing home you will have to make some compromises. Whether its the design, the budget, the finishing's or the timeline additions are not as cut and dry as when designing and the planning a new home.
7. Home usability. If this is your primary home or even your secondary home you as the homeowner are going to have to make sacrifices. There is now a large construction project next to were you sleep and eat, there will be times when you don't have water, or indoor toilets or electricity or heat. Can you handle living through that? Can your family?
8. Pressure.With any large construction project there are pressure put on you the homeowner from outside forces. Pressure from your neighbours about the noise and the parking, pressure from your contractor to pay bills and to make choices quickly and pressure from your own family to complete the project quickly so that everything can go back to normal.

In today's construction climate if you want to build an addition then your going to need to find a contractor early and engage them. You might have to give them a deposit months in advance just so that you can be sure that they can start your project when you want them too.

The better the contractor the more in demand they will be, that means they book up faster and earlier. Be prepared to be patient.

Rob Abbott

Great Lakes Custom Homes Inc.

Mistakes When Buying Real Estate

When you are looking at a home to buy in the type of real estate market that is today, (a market where there isn't a lot of homes for sale and the price of those homes has risen with the market demand) don't start projecting your dream home on to it.

What do I mean by "projecting your dream home" on a resale home? It means that you look at a home and you start envisioning all the renovations that you would do to it to make it your own.

Now this is a common practice with home buyers, to envision what a home could look like with some changes, but what starts to happen in a tight market (with limited homes for sale) is people start changing everything about the house.

Recently I have been asked for prices from people that wanted to buy homes that wanted me to give them a budget price on renovation work on older homes in the area. The problem is that its not just renovation work that people want they also want to add square footage so the budget price includes an addition. Additions are far and away a lot more money then most of the renovations that are asked for by the potential buyers.
In the end the budget ends up being almost as much as some of the houses that are for sale. These budgets run well into the hundreds of thousands and it ends up throwing a monkey wrench into the deal.

When you are looking to buy a home and you ask a contractor to work up a budget for you be careful what you tell them. If you tell them an endless stream of changes that you want to the house because that is what your dream is then they (the contractor) will work out the cost based on what you have asked for and that can end up being a lot of money all at once.

What you should be doing is putting them into 3 categories;

1. Immediate repairs. These are things that need to be fixed before you can move in or fairly quickly after you move in, these would be leaky roofs, leaky foundations, broken furnaces, broken windows, etc.
2. Updates and making the home functional. People are pretty resilient, they will adapt to pretty much anything but it doesn't make life easier or more functional. These things are new room layouts, moving the laundry room, new kitchen, new plumbing, new electrical, new bathrooms, updating insulation, refinishing floors, painting. Houses should be updated and renovated every 15 to 20 years, that's not just for resale but also because everything wears out and will need to be replaced. So unless you bought a house that had just been renovated then you have to figure on renovating the major areas in the house within so many years of moving in. 
3. Long term Plans. These are plans that will cost a lot more money then you are willing to spend, these plans can change overtime with your life. Examples of this are adding more square footage to the home (an addition). Or building a garage or carport on the property, also demolishing part of the house to rebuild it is a longer term plan. These big ticket items should always be considered part of the longer term, it allows you to save money and properly design something so that you get the most bang for your buck when you fully commit. Additions can a lot of times be added to your home while you still live there, to a certain extent.

If you were to take the rather large budget that you were given by your contractor about the house you want to buy and break it down into those three categories then you can see if spreading out the spending overtime makes sense when buying the home. After decades of spending money on it will you get your money out of it at the end when you sell it? Does spreading the money around for years mean that you can actually afford to spend that money? Do you want to spend that much money over a longer period of time or do you want to spend your money all at once to get it over with?

Deciding on what you want to do renovation wise will help clarify if you can afford to buy the home and also if the house actually will work for you now and in the long term.

Rob
Village Builders Inc.

Winter Renovations While Your On Vacation

Do you go south for the winter either on vacation or to Florida for several months?

If you do then that is a great time to have your home (back here) renovated or an addition built on to it.

Now going on a week or two vacation will not be long enough to do a large renovation but what it does allow for your contractor to do a lot of the noisy, dirty demolition when you aren't there. Routinely the water or the heat will need to be turned off for a period of time, or if the bathrooms are being renovated then this can be completed when you aren't there. When you return your heat would be working and so would your water. Usually the start of renovations are the most stressful for people because of the dust, noise and mess that happens.

If you are going to Florida for the winter (several months) then the renovation or the addition can happen without you. Most contractors do not need you onsite, in fact contractors prefer you to be somewhere else. It's easier if contractors don't have to worry about your safety or the noise they are making waking you up in the morning.

With modern technology, pictures or videos can be sent to you the homeowner for approval, questions and updates can happen through text message, email or phone. Communication can happen everyday if the homeowner requires it.

In fact we once built an entire house (the build took 12 months) and the owners were in South Korea the entire time. They only came over twice in that time frame to see how it was going and to pick some tile for the floors. When they returned and moved in everything was the way they wanted it because they had basically seen everything about the house already from pictures and videos.

The point is that if you hire the right contractor, someone that you can trust will bring your vision to life then there is no reason to not let them tear your house apart while your not there and make it look like a brand new home.

One of the biggest things about construction is that the trades and contractors need to be paid, this is made easy with e-transfers and direct deposits. This eliminates the need for you to write and send a cheque in the mail, hoping it gets there in an appropriate time frame.

If this appeals to you then now is the time to start looking for that contractor that can do the work for you this winter, AS WINTER IS COMING!

If you would like to talk about winter renovations email us at infor@villagebuilders.ca

Rob Abbott
Village Builders Inc.

Rules To Additions-Don't Build One Bigger Then The Original House

Lately a lot of people have been calling interested in putting an addition on their current home instead of having to leave their current area to buy a larger home.

Adding an addition can be a good investment as long as its done right, one of the rules that you should be following is that you should NEVER add an addition that is bigger then the existing house.

There is almost no reason to violate this rule, if you need to add an addition that is so large that it is bigger then the original house then you need to ask yourself some questions first;

1. If you need that much more space then maybe it would be easier and actually cheaper to buy a larger house and sell the smaller one.
2. If you love were you live and don't want to move then maybe you should consider tearing down the entire house and building a new one. Then you would have a completely new custom home.
3. Adding that much square footage; are you leaving yourself enough lawn for your family to enjoy?
4. As an investment; is it worth spending such a large amount of money on a house that is two small making it so much more bigger.

Most of the time when someone adds an addition that dwarfs the original building it looks like what it is, a large addition on a smaller house. Yes you end up with the square footage that you desire but there is always a compromise where the old house and the new house come together. This cross over space is usually a wasted space because its where the tie-in happened.

Most people renovate the rest of the existing home when they do their large addition, which makes the rest of the house nice but adds to the overall expense.

If you have an older small brick home adding an addition that is large will really look out of place as there is almost no way to match the bricks, this really ascents that there was an addition added.

Just because you want a lot more room doesn't actually mean that you should make your existing home that much larger. Its also quicker to sell your house and buy a larger one then to go through the process of designing, permitting and building a massive addition.

If you are wondering if you should really build an addition instead of buying a larger house call a contractor, if their honest they will tell you the truth.

Rob Abbott
Village Builders Inc.