Are you thinking of renovating or extending your home?
Have you considered the option of knocking down and rebuilding on your existing land? There can be a lot of different benefits to this, and I can outline a few here.
- Taxes and Fees
- Building Costs
- Less Unknowns
- Nothing Like A Clean Slate
- Energy Efficiency
Taxes
You can avoid the Stamp Duty involved in purchasing property as well as the agents fees for selling your existing property. Depending on the value of property you purchase, it could cost as much as 25% of the cost to rebuild.
Building Costs
Its not uncommon for the cost of a renovation of addition to be higher per square meter than the cost to build new. While this isn’t always the case, the main cause for it is contingency allowances. As a builder we need to place some allowance for making good to old work (such as where new plasterboard meets old), dealing with unforeseen issues (which we build into the cost to try and avoid hitting you with variations during the work).
Cases where it is more expensive to build new usually center around an increased specification or overall size of new home.
Less Unknowns
As we eluded to above when you are working on particularly old homes, or homes built during boom times, you can uncover a multitude of structural issues which must be rectified in order to satisfy the current building rules and Council requirements. Not all of these can be identified by the Architect or Building Designer at the scoping stage of the work. They are also sometimes items that even the builder cant foresee. This gives rise to what I call “budget risk”. With a new home, your biggest budget risk is hitting rock or unforeseen soil conditions in the ground when excavating for your foundations.
Nothing Like A Clean Slate
I have done many additions where the parting comment was “I love the new addition, but it makes the rest of the house look like it needs a serious update”. When you build new you have your chance to get exactly what you want without compromising because of an existing wall, doorway or room layout your attached to. You have absolute freedom of layout.
Energy Efficiency
This is probably the most important. In the coming years the Energy Efficiency of a home will become a key aspect in its re-sale value. This is because people are becoming more aware of the cost of running heating and cooling in houses and how designing for Energy Efficiency can reduce those running costs while also make the house nicer to live in.
While it may not be the right decision for you, its always worth looking at what is might cost to make the switch between a renovation/extension job and a new build.
