If your children are rapidly surpassing the age where they can share bedrooms, your dog is going stir crazy in the house, and there’s regular conflict over who gets to use the bathroom first, it might be time to re-evaluate your living situation.
There reaches a time in every family when you’ve outgrown your beloved home, and you realise you have some important decisions ahead of you.
Your two options: relocate and buy a bigger property, or renovate your current home to suit your growing needs. Before you read any further, there’s some steps we recommend you take when deciding by which means you should upsize your Brisbane real estate.
- Find out how much your home is currently worth by consulting a Place New Farm agent to provide a property valuation, along with their commission, and stamp duty costs.
- Then, tally up the cost of the changes you want to make for your renovation. This includes labour, materials, potential alternative accommodation, even time taken off work. We recommend taking 10% of this figure and adding it to the overall number for a more realistic total, to account for the unforeseen costs that can often accrue.
- Combine the figures from step 1 and 2 – add the property valuation to the renovation costs, and then minus the agent’s commission and stamp duty fees. This will give you an estimated budget of what you could spend on a new home, if you were to sell rather than renovate.
- Using this budget, ask the Place New Farm agent you originally consulted with to send you through a list of homes that sold in your price range in the suburb/s you’d be looking to move to in the past year, to gauge the kind of home you could purchase, rather than renovate.
You may find there’s great options out there for you to snap up and purchase within your budget, or that your money is better spent renovating your home to suit your needs. It’s a complex thought process, as both options have their positives and negatives. We’ve done some of the heavy thinking for you, to help make one of life’s greatest conundrums that little bit easier.
The positives of relocating
- Relocating enables you to buy your dream home. Having purchased a home before, now you really know what works for your family and what doesn’t. Always wanted a double sink bathroom or a kitchen with a pantry? Now’s your time to find all these things in the perfect home for you.
- The Brisbane real estate market has never been better. Going from strength to strength means that now is a great time to sell your current home and maximise on your investment.
- A new suburb can mean a complete lifestyle change. If you’ve always wanted to live closer to parks, in better school catchment areas, or further away from the city, you can invest your money in the suburb that’s best for you.
The negatives of relocating
- Working out your budget and finance options can be daunting when selling your home. Chances are likely that it will be more expensive to sell your current home and purchase a new one than renovating your current property.
- While the Brisbane real estate market has never been stronger in terms of demand, this also means that property prices are at an all-time high, making purchasing your dream home more and more costly.
- It can be difficult timing the sale of your current property to line up with locating and moving into the best home for you.
The positives of renovating
- You’ve built not only a life in your current suburb, but also memories. Renovating your home enables you to stay in your familiar local area and skip the hassle of uprooting both yours and your family's lives.
- Having lived in the home long enough, chances are you’ve thought about the tweaks you’d make in a renovation to make the home perfect. Knowing exactly what the renovation would involve is a major asset to the process.
- You can significantly increase the value of your home in a strong Brisbane market that’s showing no signs of slowing down. Having found out how much your home is worth prior to renovating enables you to know you made the right decision when getting another property value after the renovation. Chances are, the price has achieved a healthy increase.
The negatives of renovating
- If the process of moving houses seems daunting to you, substantial renovations are twice the work. You’ll still have to pack up and put your belongings in storage, find alternative accommodation, and take time off work.
- Renovating a home is often more time consuming and stressful than selling and moving. If you want a quick turn around and don’t deal well with minor details, renovating isn’t for you.
- Unforeseen difficulties can make it a stressful process. Council approvals can stand in your way, and unplanned costs can spiral out of control once construction has commenced.
Final word
If you’re one of the lucky few who have the space and resources to extend your current property and make it your dream home, and you love the area you live in, then what’s stopping you? However, if you find yourself unable to stop flicking through homes for sale in your price range in a suburb that’s ideal for you, then you already know what to do. If you need advice on what your options are to sell your home, and information about what’s currently available on the market, speak to one of our friendly Place New Farm agents today.
