Growing Home: An Approach to Adding Space

As real estate markets across the country deal with sluggish sales and plunging prices, many people who, just a couple of years ago, might have decided to sell a smaller home to move to a bigger one are now choosing to remodel and add more space. And while adding square footage can be a sound financial decision, it still represents a major investment.

Be Realistic about Your Budget

Homeowners who are unrealistic about their budgets are one of the biggest roadblocks to successful renovations, says Greg Harth, president of Spring House, Pa.-based Harth Builders. “When it comes to budget, people come to the conversation thinking about what their project will cost and what they want to spend, and those numbers are usually the same for them,” he says. “Unfortunately, sometimes that just isn’t realistic. So, we like to talk about the budget right away.”

Another reason it’s important to start with budget is so your contractor knows what he should be talking to you about doing. “You can go through so much work and get them so excited about a project only to find out they don’t have the money to do it,” says Nick Barile, president of Greenwich, Conn.-based York Construction & Development. “People really do have misconceptions about how much certain additions will cost because they don’t always realize everything that goes into it. I recently had one person who had some really fantastic, grand ideas about what he wanted to do with his home, but it turned out he thought it was going to cost about half of the actual estimate. It sounds kind of bad to say the first thing to talk about should be budget, but it is.”

Being realistic about budget doesn’t just mean not going over the top, says Dave Whitehorn, co-owner of Kitchen and Bath Unlimited in Derry, N.H., which specializes in kitchen and bath remodels and additions. “Some people fail to do their homework when it comes to allocating a realistic budget,” Whitehorn says. “The budget can certainly get away from people quickly on the higher end, but it can also be a problem on the lower end. If they don’t have a realistic budget, they’ll never get what they want.”