Should we spend 500K on a renovation?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wish my parents had renovated our house my freshman year in HS so I could have enjoyed it for 3 years. Instead they renovated when I left for college and I didn’t get to enjoy it nearly as much!

What a tough life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You’ve made it through their childhood without the extra space. Now is the time to think about downsizing in 4 years. Start shedding material things and travel. It’s dumb to enlarge once the kids are grown. Remodel here and there, but no major renovations just as kids are done.

We just traveled and enjoyed coming back home to our newly renovated house. YMMD.

Did you travel for 6 months and keep your house vacant? Because that's how long the construction project OP is talking about if she's lucky.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Op,
Are you saying you will be doing this massive, arduous remodel while your kids are living at home and are in high school? Do you realize what high school kids schedules are like and how much pressure they are living with these days?

I think it borders on child abuse to do a major remodel while your kids are in high school. 😜

Do you realize you will not be able to live in the house while much of this is going on?

Yes we have a child who went through HS recently. Yes we plan to move to a nice apartment downtown Bethesda. HS child is excited to live "downtown" for the short term. Much closer to HS and an adventure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My neighbor did something similar. It went so over budget on things like his lawn destroyed, fence destroyed, shrubs destroyed, extra issues, price run ups and his driveway got messed up by huge trucks. In end his reno cost around 650K and his only complaint was it was like 18 months of life and he could have bought a home 650K more in neighborhood and moved. And that 650K home would of been bigger with a bigger plot.

My neighbor told me a guy down the block bought a 7,000 sf home and he got to almost one million in crazy renovations he was so over budget, no expanding SF. These guys well make it 200K a Kitchen, 50K new master bath and you are at 250k and only done two rooms. This house had 7 bedrooms and six baths they renovated plus windows and landscaping got to one million quick.

It is highly unlikely that $650 more the his net from the sale of his home, after all transaction costs, would have gotten him a newly renovated house in his neighborhood. He's just grousing.

Well his house he owns mortgage free since he bought it like in 2010 for a song and did renovate it in 2010 was worth around 1.8 million prerenovation. so he would of had a $2.45 million budget when house hunting. He could have paid cash new home. I doubt he even have to sell old home dude is a CEO making bank. He just was saying it was a waste of his time doing it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You’ve made it through their childhood without the extra space. Now is the time to think about downsizing in 4 years. Start shedding material things and travel. It’s dumb to enlarge once the kids are grown. Remodel here and there, but no major renovations just as kids are done.

We just traveled and enjoyed coming back home to our newly renovated house. YMMD.

Did you travel for 6 months and keep your house vacant? Because that's how long the construction project OP is talking about if she's lucky.

No, we would live close by in order to keep an eye on the project. Although 6 months of travel sounds pretty nice but not possible with kids.

OP here. Thank you to everybody who posted a response. I am reading each one and taking all comments in. We're been through several smaller renovations and are experienced with overruns in time and budget. We've also had friends and family with horror stories. We know there's a big uncertainty. We'll have enough padding budgeted. We love our house location and land it's on so not considering a move - we just want the home to meet our needs and add touches that make us happy to be there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would think about whether you would still start it if it costs 750 or even a million in the end. I’d rather have that money for retirement but ymmv.

Good thing to consider. We have a healthy retirement fund, not including future inheritance. After renovating several previous homes, unintentionally a few years before selling them, it would be nice to do one with a long time horizon this time and enjoy it.

[Anonymous]

We did a $450k renovation 5 years ago with one kid in HS and one in MS. TLDR: timing is fine, but your budget is probably insufficient for what you want (and will inevitably spend.)

We're very very very glad we did it, although if we were as comfortable as the OP I might have gone for the full tear down. We plan to stay here for the long run and I'm glad we have more space but also maintained enough financial flexibility to pay full freight for college. As we approach retirement, we're also thinking about options for travel/second residence, which would have been much harder had we built an entire brand-new home. I'm also glad that I didn't have to deal with a massive reno (including 7 months move-out) with small children.

We added on and renovated much of the existing house for what we spent; I'm VERY skeptical that the OP is going to get an entire floor and "general upgrades" to the existing house for $500k today. And as some PPs have noted there's tons of expenses outside of the construction fees themselves - all the fixtures and fittings, new furniture, landscaping.

[Anonymous]

No don't polish a turd, buy a new build

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We did a $450k renovation 5 years ago with one kid in HS and one in MS. TLDR: timing is fine, but your budget is probably insufficient for what you want (and will inevitably spend.)

We're very very very glad we did it, although if we were as comfortable as the OP I might have gone for the full tear down. We plan to stay here for the long run and I'm glad we have more space but also maintained enough financial flexibility to pay full freight for college. As we approach retirement, we're also thinking about options for travel/second residence, which would have been much harder had we built an entire brand-new home. I'm also glad that I didn't have to deal with a massive reno (including 7 months move-out) with small children.

We added on and renovated much of the existing house for what we spent; I'm VERY skeptical that the OP is going to get an entire floor and "general upgrades" to the existing house for $500k today. And as some PPs have noted there's tons of expenses outside of the construction fees themselves - all the fixtures and fittings, new furniture, landscaping.

OP again. Thanks everyone, taking in all of your suggestions. I think we need to open up to the possibility of doing a gutting/tear down and increasing our budget by a fair amount. We realized today that we generally love the house (location, yard, furnishings and little customizations) but nothing much about the rooms and layout itself. Lots to think about, really appreciate all the comments.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You’ve made it through their childhood without the extra space. Now is the time to think about downsizing in 4 years. Start shedding material things and travel. It’s dumb to enlarge once the kids are grown. Remodel here and there, but no major renovations just as kids are done.

We just traveled and enjoyed coming back home to our newly renovated house. YMMD.

Did you travel for 6 months and keep your house vacant? Because that's how long the construction project OP is talking about if she's lucky.

No, we would live close by in order to keep an eye on the project. Although 6 months of travel sounds pretty nice but not possible with kids.

OP here. Thank you to everybody who posted a response. I am reading each one and taking all comments in. We're been through several smaller renovations and are experienced with overruns in time and budget. We've also had friends and family with horror stories. We know there's a big uncertainty. We'll have enough padding budgeted. We love our house location and land it's on so not considering a move - we just want the home to meet our needs and add touches that make us happy to be there.

The first part exactly. You want to be close by in order to deal with issues in real time and review progress. We have friends who usually go to Greece in the summer (one of the parents is Greek) but the year they renovated they didn’t travel. Different time zones and potential internet issues were two things that swayed them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We did a $450k renovation 5 years ago with one kid in HS and one in MS. TLDR: timing is fine, but your budget is probably insufficient for what you want (and will inevitably spend.)

We're very very very glad we did it, although if we were as comfortable as the OP I might have gone for the full tear down. We plan to stay here for the long run and I'm glad we have more space but also maintained enough financial flexibility to pay full freight for college. As we approach retirement, we're also thinking about options for travel/second residence, which would have been much harder had we built an entire brand-new home. I'm also glad that I didn't have to deal with a massive reno (including 7 months move-out) with small children.

We added on and renovated much of the existing house for what we spent; I'm VERY skeptical that the OP is going to get an entire floor and "general upgrades" to the existing house for $500k today. And as some PPs have noted there's tons of expenses outside of the construction fees themselves - all the fixtures and fittings, new furniture, landscaping.

This and any foundation or roof work will be costly. And adding another floor will require both.