The need for adding a house addition to your existing home depends primarily on your personal financial and lifestyle situations.
A house addition can be a fantastic solution for a space problem in your current property, but to determine if it is the best solution for you there are some relevant questions that you should ask yourself.
There are many factors to evaluate when considering a Houston home addition is the best strategy for your situation.
With that said, we will explore some home addition common questions, but typically it comes down money and the overriding need to remain in the house and neighborhood that you love.
Learn how Marwood Construction can provide you Houston house addition solutions
What are the Common Reasons for Adding a Home Additions?
Several significant moments during your adult life you will face multiple dynamic changes in your lifetime that causes you to rethink your home’s space needs.
This is a result of many different life changing events. Sometimes we move our household for career or job-related reasons, while other times we move for personal reasons.
We will restrict our focus of our discussion to life’s typical cycles from getting married to living in the empty nest.
The first major milestone is generally associated with getting married. You may be renting or even own a home, but when you get married it typically results in buying a mutually owned house.
This could be a need for additional space or this could be because you got married and both you and your spouse agreed you would get a joint property.
Whichever it is, marriage is one of those events that provides a great motivational drive to purchase a new property.
The second typical milestone is usually associated with having children. School districts and the need to have additional living & bedroom areas are required for peace of mind.
In these situations, it is very common to move to a larger house in a specific area of your city. This is often driven by you choosing a specific school district, but more often your decision for a larger property is due to the need for more space.
Depending on your financial resources, this can cause a younger couple to move away from the metro area to the outlaying areas of larger cities.
As commonly known, this action is often motivated by the need for a Houston house addition for your hard-earned dollar.
If you chose to buy in a large city like the Houston metro area, you most certainly will pay a greater amount for a larger property in a good school district.
The third typical milestone where life’s cycles challenge your housing decisions is when the children leave the nest.
This can cause the homeowner to evaluate their space needs and determine that the floor plan no longer serves their future lifestyles, which can also result in another property change.
Unless you are prepared to substantially down size, it can be socially and emotionally challenging to move from the family household.
This leads to deliberation regarding lifestyle chooses with respect to how your house will serve your future needs.
You love the neighborhood; the house will accommodate extended family visits and you like the house that you are living in.
So instead of seeking a new household, you give some serious thought to identifying your changing lifestyle needs and begin to reimage how you can repurpose your space needs.
Often leading to adding a major remodel or a home addition to the existing structures envelope.
What are the Benefits of Adding a House Addition?
There are many benefits for a homeowner to consider expanding the envelope of their existing structure.
The most significant benefit to building a house addition to your existing property is that it’s simply the best and most cost effective financial alternative you have to a space problem with your house.
Adding an addition becomes financially attractive compared to buying a new property, when you take in to account the expenses associated with the relocation cost.
When you add up the cost of commissions, closing cost and moving expenses associated with buying a new house, the cost of a major addition or a home remodel becomes an attractive solution.
We will review a few supporting financial scenarios further in this discussion.
The second most significant benefit to the homeowner is that you can design nearly anything you desire.
After you have carefully considered your changing lifestyle needs, it is helpful to discuss your options with a home addition contractor.
They will listen to your needs and review any documents or ideas that you present in an effort to explore possible options available.
Once you have explored your feasible options you should consider contracting to design your home addition to determine if a remodel will fit your expected future needs.
A professional design build general contractor should be able to design your house addition and improvements within your target budget.
The most important benefit of a Houston house addition if you have been in your property for many years, is the equity. The property equity builds up from 2 different sources over time.
First the mortgage equity which you pay into every month. Most mortgages are front loaded with interest expense, but as time goes by the principle you pay becomes a larger proportion.
The second form of property equity is the market price appreciation. Over time, property prices increase adding greater value to your property.
Depending on the equity you have built up over the years, building a home addition can actually increase the value and add additional space of your property more than you can buy in the same neighborhood.
How Much Does a Houston House Addition Cost?
One of the important matters in weighing alternative considerations is understanding the inherent market value lost in the selling and buying transaction process.
When you add square footage through a Houston house addition to your property you increase the value while preserving the capital appreciation in value accumulated over the years.
When you sell your existing property and buy another in a nearby neighborhood, the increased value appreciation from your existing house is lost in the transaction.
You do not actually loss the cash value during the transaction, but rather your capital appreciation is offset by the sales price of the new property you are buying.
A portion of the sales price of the house you are buying reflects the capital appreciation that the seller has accumulated.
Hence your capital appreciation from your sales price is negated by the seller’s capital appreciation realized.
Depending on what area of Houston you live, the house and land prices have traditionally increased by 3% – 6% annually, not unlike most major cities.
Based upon a modest property value in metro Houston of $700,000 over a period of 5 years would represent $175,000 in value appreciation at 5%.
If you use the average value of $1,300,000 for higher end neighborhoods over the same period at 5% annually, the appreciation would be $325,000 in a 5 year period.
In both these cases over a short period of time, the value appreciation by itself would more the pay for your Houston house addition or remodel to your existing property.
If you have a small lot that your house is built on, it is also might be worth discussing with your Houston home addition contractor the feasibility of adding a second story addition to your house. This strategy can double the size of your existing structure.
How Much Value Does a Houston House Addition Add to the Property Value?
Another important often overlooked matter in a sell / buy scenario is the actual cost associated with lost opportunity transaction cost.
The lost opportunity transaction cost is represented by sales commissions on your sold property, your closing cost on both sides of the transaction and your moving cost.
Let’s look at both of our previous scenarios (commissions 6%, closing cost 1.5%, moving cost .5%). In the case of the $700,000 sell/buy scenario, your total transaction cost would likely be approximately $56,000.
Total potential value transfer loss of $231,000 = ($56,000 + $175,000). In the case of the $1,300,000 sell/buy scenario, your total would represent approximately $104,000. A total potential value transfer loss of $429,000 = ($104,000 + 325,000). It is worth mentioning that these costs do not take in consideration the expenses associated with making any personal improvements to the new home you might purchase.
One final benefit of a home addition worth your attention if you are approaching the senior age group. For those homeowners whose home represents their homestead in Houston and are over the age of 65, they will receive additional benefits in favorable property tax treatment.
There are additional tax benefits from the cap on your homes taxable value and additional homestead exemptions that seniors benefit from.
This gets even better when you consider you can also increase the value of your existing home’s square footage while reducing the long-term effects of the valuation cap after improvement cost adjustments.
Conclusion
So as presented, you should give a home addition and/or a major Houston home remodeling project some serious consideration as a viable option to seeking purchasing an alternative house when life’s home cycles present you with some challenges.
Taking the time to carefully evaluate both home addition as well as home renovation options will provide you rewarding results before you take any immediate action.
Your home addition contractor can play an important role in providing your estimated cost to different proposed project scenarios.
