Demolition Vs. Renovation | Should I Renovate or Demolish?
In certain situations, in terms of energy conservation and overall quality, restoring substantial structural damage, sourcing the correct kinds of materials or modernizing an old house has the potential to be very pricey, complex, and labour intensive, and there is a likelihood that it will be a fairly long-term undertaking.
You will need to be prepared for the prospect of uncovering more major issues as you go. These things make it hard for people to decide on whether they should demolish and rebuild a property (can also be a part of the property) or renovate it.
Is it cheaper to rebuild or renovate?
If you don’t need a lot of additional rooms, maybe just another bedroom or a bigger living room, then it doesn’t make sense to tear down the whole home. It is cheaper and more practical to connect a small addition to the current building than to start on a long renovation project. Honestly, these things depend on many factors and id different from case to case. Some of the factors that can help you decide are;
- Value of land with a new building
- Commitment to the place
- Are you having foundation issues?
- Local and political changes in regulation
- Will renovation solve your problem?
Should I Renovate or Demolish?
1. Visualize your Goals
Ideally, you want to be able to reach the living areas of your house with north-eastern and/or northern sunshine. If the house faces the entirely wrong way, and there is no space left on the block to add a new addition, you may plan for solar access, or you have to make major structural improvements to the current house to open it to northern light, so the better use of your mortgage might not be a redesign.
2. Calculate your costs
If you’re doing an extensive redesign and a lot of structural improvements, beginning from scratch is always cheaper. You can build a brand new single-storey home for $200,000 and a two-storey home for $250,000 as an overall reference.
And the bonus of knocking down and restoring is that everything from the location of the island bench in the kitchen to the layout and number of windows in the living room can be personalised, which means you can come up with a design that suits your lifestyle exactly. Meanwhile, renovating is more like attempting to put a square peg into a round hole, which can also be more expensive.
3. Check with your council
For you, it might not even be a choice to demolish your current home and create something modern. Council planning laws in certain areas forbid houses of a certain era or certain historical significance from being demolished or substantially modified (particularly in their street appearance).
4. Consider the property’s age
We’re not building them like we used to. This is why it is normally a better choice to renovate a character house with elegant oak floors and decorative ceilings than to tear down and restore it. (Still it depends on many more things which is a different case property to property)
Yes, it may cost more that way, but it can rarely overstate the value of maintaining heritage, and it almost ensures that your home will stand out on the street from the other homes.
Conclusion
If you work full time or raise a family, you need to question yourself if you still want to live with builders in the house for an extended duration. While a redesign of your case could be preferable in certain respects to restoration, the additional complexity could mean it’s not worth it.
In the other hand if you have planned things and you think rebuilding is a necessity then surely go for it. For any queries regarding demolitions, please contact Newcastle’s Demolitions Experts– Watson Site Services.