To Build or Renovate?
How do you know you if renovating is the best choice? A question we get asked daily from clients is “What should I do to my home?” Should you stay and renovate, knock over and start again or find something new?
When renovating you must always take the challenge head on! You need to think out side the box to create your dream Hamptons home. The image you’ve created in your head has to be brought to life; you must always think literally and creatively. Remember, things don’t always go to plan when you renovate, it is like peeling back layers of an onion. There is always a flow on effect so you need to be on the ball at every moment, ready to re-create. When building, however, it is very easy to create your dream Hamptons home and you can plan every aspect and have sizes as you want, make it as livable as you want, rooms where you need them and the look is fresh rather than re-faced. Building new opens up a Pandora’s box of ideas.
When creating a new home, a few things to keep in mind are how you want to live, do you like open plan or do you prefer separate rooms? Are you an indoor or outdoor person? What rooms do you spend most of your time in? What is your style? It is a huge decision that takes much consideration. I have 4 questions I always ask our clients and each of these serve to provoke their thoughts and allows them to think about things objectively.
Top 4 Questions
- What don’t you like about your home? Start to think about what your dislikes and likes are of your current home. Maybe it’s the flow of the house or the way it looks that is making your feel uneasy. Sometimes it comes down to timing, is it time for you downsize or up-size?
- Do you love the area? You might have great friends in the neighborhood or a favourite park you take your pets and kids. You may love your neighbors and/or the area so much that the thought of leaving is just out of the question. You need to consider what lifestyle this area is giving you. I know when I chose our home it needed to be near the ocean!
- How much longer do you want to live there? Do you want this to be your forever home or maybe it is only in your 5-10 year plan? You can start weighing up if it is worth staying in your home or move on to greener pastures. Many clients renovate with the intent to flip, and then re-fall in love with their own home again with its new Hamptons feel.
- What is your budget? You need to research what could you add to your house that would be worth your money. This is a great time to go and see other homes in the area, check the market on similar homes and prices, then ask yourself, is it worth renovating and refreshing your home or should you build new? Your next step would be to see if there is land available and work out how much your dream home would be worth to build. Also, check to see if you have time on your side to build. A renovation may take 3- 9 months, where as a build could take 14-24 months, both dependent on the detail. The factors at play here are – do you need to move out for a period of time? What is the cost of renting property whilst you wait for your new home to be built? If you need extra support with this, jump onto our website ‘Blog’ for working within $10K, $20K and $30K budgets.
Once you have considered all of the above, you get to the fun part! Start looking at Instagram, Pinterest, cut out your favourite looks in magazines and start collating a mood board of images. Sometime you don’t even know what you like in the picture but it may just feel right. The feeling you get when you look at you mood board is what you are looking to achieve. When all the images are placed together you can start to see a style coming through and without even releasing, voile you have your style. No doubt if your reading this article, then your style is classic, coastal and all about the Hamptons.
