When deciding to renovate or rebuild, consider all the factors

Sometimes, your family needs more room than your current home provides.

You may be wondering whether you should build an addition onto your house, or tear down and rebuild. There are many factors that need to be considered when making this decision, including your budget, the state of your existing home and regulatory approval processes.

Let’s first look at some reasons why building an addition to your home may be the right choice. If you are only looking to add a little more floor area, a simple addition is a practical way of creating more living space.

You may want to extend the rear of the house to help make your ground floor living area larger. If your home can handle the additional load, you may decide to make a vertical addition. Building a second storey can help you avoid costly work, like a new foundation.

An addition may also be your only choice if heritage, conservation or site density regulatory restrictions make it impossible to tear down your home and build a new one.

In some circumstances, demolishing the existing home and rebuilding makes more sense. Perhaps your home’s structure doesn’t meet today’s building standards for supporting a second floor. In this case, you may have no choice but to build new to avoid a costly structural upgrade.

Another reason to choose to rebuild is that the layout of the house you want is dramatically different from the one you currently have. There is a tipping point at which the costs of changing your current layout would overwhelm the savings. In addition, working with an existing structure often means losing the opportunity for higher ceilings or a fresh start on floor plans. It can quickly become more advantageous to build a new home.

Finally, your current home may simply be too costly to repair.

When a home has undergone a series of renovations, there may be a number of construction challenges to be dealt with before creating the new building envelope.

There is the possibility of illegal or non-conforming work that will need to be brought up to current building code requirements, resulting in additional costs. Other considerations to take into account for a rebuild are a damp basement, the state of services (water, sanitary and electricity) to the home, and the general quality of existing finishes.

If you have more questions, I encourage you to speak with a RenoMark renovator. Visit renomark.ca to find one near you.

And remember, the RenoMark Code of Conduct gives homeowners peace of mind as it requires renovators to offer a minimum one-year warranty on all work, carry a minimum of $2 million in liability insurance and provide a detailed written contract.