Building A House Addition: Pros And Cons

BlogAdmin2Friday, Apr 04, 2021

A house addition is one of the most expensive home renovation projects your house can undergo. Contact HomeReno today for your home renovation needs.

If you find that your family is growing beyond the confines of your family home, you’ve got two choices: either move into a bigger home with more square footage or build a house addition onto your existing home.

A house addition is one of the most expensive home renovation projects your house can undergo. And, unlike landscaping or a paint job, it cannot be reversed, so making the decision can be quite a challenging one. Before writing out that six-figure cheque to your contractor, you should take the time to weigh in the pros and cons to undergoing such a major home renovation.

Pros

Home additions are completely customizable

Your home was probably built by someone else, and owned by countless others, before it landed in your capable hands. You can switch up the flooring, the paint and switch out your light fixtures but these are just cosmetic changes that go over the main structure of the house. When you are constructing your own home addition, it is fully customizable down from the foundation all the way to the top of the roof. It’s like building and customizing a brand new house in your vision. This remodelling project has the power to be creatively satisfying as well as functional.

Home additions are the best way to add space versus other options

A home addition is the greatest way to add more square footage to your home compared to sunrooms, finished basements and room additions. Each has their pros and cons, but sunrooms can be seen by new buyers as a waste of space, and if you worked hard to build a conditioned sunroom, you might as well have just built a home addition because that’s what you really wanted. Finished basements do not add any more square footage to your home, and they can be gloomy if they are not daylight basements. Room additions are still a costly investment, but you will only end up with one extra room, versus multiple rooms from a home addition.

Great high cost-value ratio

Mostly all of the cost of a home addition to a mid-range two-story home may be recovered at the time of sale. No one can predict the real estate market years from now, but it is typically cheaper to construct a home addition than it is to buy a home with the square footage of your home plus the home addition. If anything, the closing costs associated with selling your old house and buying a new house would push it over the edge.

Some cons:

  • Higher resale price not guaranteed
  • More space means a higher cooling and heating bill
  • More house to clean
  • You will lose yard space if you are not building vertically
  • The whole process of going through the renovation can be taxing, emotionally, mentally and physically

Have any questions about home additions? Contact Home Reno today for your home renovation needs.