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| Photo by Dillon Kydd on Unsplash |
{This is a collaborative post}
Are you wondering if it’s better to extend your home or move to a new house? Choosing between moving home and extending your house can be quite difficult. Both processes can be very costly and disruptive. However, each of them also has various benefits.
As your family grows, your current home may start to feel cramped or not sufficient to suit your needs. So how do you know if an extension or a new home is the best option for you? This article will go over three of the most important questions that you should ask yourself if you are struggling to choose between moving home or extending.
Will An Extension Add Value to Your Home?
When making a decision to extend your home, you will have to
consider if the extension is the right option for your specific home. If you
get an inappropriate or poorly executed extension, this can actually reduce the value of
your home if you end up wanting to move home in the future.
It's important to remember that any exterior extension work on your home will impact and reduce the land available on your property space. With this in mind, it’s important to consider what you will be gaining as well as what you’ll be losing.
Luckily, there are many different types of extensions, so you'll likely find one that benefits you and helps increase the value of your home. Adding an extra bedroom to your home can increase the value by around 15% onto the value of your home. Whilst, the addition of extra space in the kitchen or an added bathroom can add around 5% to the value of your home.
Do You Have The Budget For An Extension?
This is something that only you can answer, and it will
depend on how long you are planning to live in your current property.
If you don’t see yourself staying in your current property on a long-term basis, then it may be worth considering whether an extension would be worthwhile for you. The average cost to build a one-storey extension on your home is around £1200 - £2000+ per square metre, depending on the location of your property.
In addition to the cost of the extension itself, you will also need to factor in the cost of planning permission, which is often over £200, and any additional costs such as the addition of fixtures, fittings and redecoration.
However, in most cases, it works out much cheaper to extend your property rather than move house – especially if the reason for the extension is for additional space. Buying a larger property than the one you're in now will usually work out more expensive due to all the lost costs like removals, solicitors fees and stamp duty. It’s important to think carefully about your budget and how much additional space you’re looking for.
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| Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash |
Can You Afford a New Home With Your Budget?
If you've outgrown your current home, but you don't want to
go through the process of extending it, then it might be time for you to think
about moving house. The best way to decide whether moving home is the right
thing for you would be to go through a simple cost-benefit analysis.
It is important to think about your budget based on the equivalent value of your property plus the hypothetical cost of the equivalent extension. This is the best way to work out which option would be most beneficial and affordable for you. This also allows you to enter the buying market with a clear idea of what you can afford in terms of a new house, and you may even realise at this point that an extension is a better option for you instead.
If you are planning to move to a new home and then add an extension to the new place, it may be worth checking if these plans are acceptable according to the local planning laws for that area. You don't want to get your hopes up for nothing.
Final Thoughts
Both extending and moving home come with various pros and
cons in the end. The best thing you can do to decide which option is right for
you is to carefully weigh up your needs against the future selling prospects
for your property before coming to a decision.
Neither option is necessarily better than the other. It is simply a matter of personal preference and your current financial situation. House moves and home extensions are both large decisions to make, so if you're stuck on which one to choose, take some time to weigh up the pros and cons of what you may end up gaining and losing with each process.
