Renovate or Build New?

When we take a look at improving your home, there are many choices to make. Most people think building new is always the most expensive way. Although costs can be high for this, the value of a newly built home can sometimes offset the high costs of building.

Building within the constraints of your existing home can also pose challenges. While most of them can be overcome, some require such large modifications to the house we would recommend building from scratch on certain occasions.

Have a look below at a few of the considerations when deciding to renovate or build new.

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• Energy Efficiency

  Older homes can be quite costly to retrofit to match the efficiency of a newly built home. While insulating walls and attics are possible, getting rid of some of the old building techniques used in older buildings can be quite expensive to implement. For example, insulating underneath a basement slab after its poured in quite prohibitive. Did you know that basements account for 20% of heat loss in a house!

• End Value

  Calculations need to be carefully made to estimate the value of your renovated home vs a brand new home. When deciding to renovate an entire home you could save a considerable about of money renovating but building new may have a much greater value once completed. New homes can be quite a bit more valuable as they have a lot of technology and building science built into them that a renovated home might not have.

• Timeline

  Sometimes, it can be a lot quicker to tear down an old house and build a new one. Working within the constraints of an old home can take time to figure out how to blend new and old and have it all function well. It can be quite costly to make a decision to tear down a house half way through a renovation so its best to have the discussions in the planning stage.