The Pros and Cons of Installing a New Addition to Your Home

Published:
February 3, 2016
Last updated:
January 26, 2022
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Adding an addition to your home can be an exciting opportunity to explore. Maybe you’re weighing the options between refinancing your Seattle home to add an addition, or to buy a new house in the area instead. There are a number of factors to consider with a new home addition and we’ve outlined the pros and cons of the matter to help you make the best possible decision for your situation.

Pros

High ROI

Installing a well-crafted addition to your home has the potential to increase its overall value significantly. In a healthy real estate market, your home improvement investment can exponentially increase your house’s worth; dollar-for-dollar it can be a brilliant move.

More Affordable Than Buying New

Forget finding your dream house, build it where you are right now. In most cases, when comparing costs of square footage, adding a new addition is much more affordable than buying that same equivalent in the real estate market. Using your imagination, the right construction and some good design, transforming your home into the one you’ve always dreamed of can be more cost-effective than purchasing one that already exists.

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Usability

Building a new addition can bring your home back to life, opening it up with a new space. A new addition can transform the overall feel of your house while providing a very useful new room. Perhaps your family is growing and you need another bedroom, or maybe you just want to add that playroom for your kids to keep the living room a little less cluttered. A new addition can be very functional for the entire home.

Design

When you buy a new home, you have to accept the entirety of the house and how it was built, warts and all. However, when building an addition, you get to design it exactly how you want it; it can be done with every detail that you desire. You also get to flex your creativity muscle and have your input on the design, having the addition look and function like you prefer.

Refresh Your Current Home

Sometimes changing up your living environment can spice up your life. However, selling your home, buying a new one, and moving your family to a new location can be a big pain, and probably not worth the effort if you just want to shake things up a little. Installing an addition can refresh your environment with a much more affordable cost than purchasing new.

Cons

Extra Cost

When working with contractors, things don’t always go as smoothly as planned. Sometimes there can be extra costs, change orders, or more work involved than the estimator anticipated. If you refinance your Seattle home and receive cash for a particular installation budget, some last-minute changes or unforeseen problems might have you needing to borrow more money or unexpectedly dip into your savings.

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Price Ceiling

If you invest a lot of time, money, and construction into your home, there’s no guarantee that it sees equal or better value representation on the market. In every neighborhood, depending on the home values in the area, there’s a general price ceiling of what people will be willing to pay for a house. With building an addition comes the risk of over-investing in your house and not getting the same value in return when selling. If you’re considering taking out a loan on your house, one of our better refinance tips for you is to only borrow against your home for remodeling if you know you’ll gain a significant return on investment.

Home Disruptions

When building an addition, there will inevitably be some sharing of your space with whoever is doing the work. This disturbance can be ok for a short period, but after a while can become very disruptive. It’s hard to experience harmony and peace at home while there are construction tools, workers and extra noise in your environment.

Need a loan?

Will you need mortgage financing to buy a home? We offer a wide variety of mortgage programs and tools with flexible qualification criteria. We serve the entire state, as well as the broader Pacific Northwest region that includes Oregon, Colorado, and Idaho. Please contact us today with any financing-related questions you have.

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