Housing Dilema? What would you do?

DH and I have been looking for about 2 years for colonials in our area. We are very picky and have a long list of must haves. In addition, we absolutely love our block, all the houses are maintained nicely, our neighbors are awesome, its a dead end block and we have a nice size lot. The downside is our house has a bad layout (cape with the stairs in the middle of house) and we bought in 2007 at the height of the market and lost about 60K on our current home. After much searching we just haven't found the one. So now we are considering 2 options.

Option 1:
Stay in our current house and add a 10 foot extension along the back to give us a large living room, kitchen and master bd, and extend halfway on the top of the new extension to add a 3d br/bath upstairs for the kids.

Option 2:
Buy a basic knockdown around the corner and build a colonial from the ground up. Downside, the block isn't as nice as ours and its a thru block.

We are so confused!

Re: Housing Dilema? What would you do?

Besides Location Location Location have you priced out the extension? And are you saying if you sold your current home you would loose $60k? If that's the case I would stay. Thats a lot of money. Between that and the location. I would figure out a way to make it work.

Message edited 2/11/2015 8:13:04 PM.

Re: Housing Dilema? What would you do?

If those are your only two options, I'd build onto your current house.

Re: Housing Dilema? What would you do?

They really are our only 2 options because we have looked and looked. I haven't formally priced out an extension but I have a round about figure in my head. I'd have to get plans drawn up and start actually pricing the extension here. I only want to spend about 100K on the extension here and if it went over, I would eliminate the upstairs bedroom and the boys would have to share. Not ideal but doable.

Re: Housing Dilema? What would you do?

Out of your two options, I'd stay and renovate.

But do you need more space immediately? If not, I might hold off and keep looking.

If you really think what you want may not exist in your area, then I guess customizing your house or custom building a new one is the way to go.

But if you invest in renovating your current home, which sounds like it will still be expensive and time consuming, will you honestly be happy with the end result? Or will you be wishing for that true colonial?

Also, since you are already losing money on the home, I would want to know if your changes will build equity. You dint want to over improve for your area, especially if you may not stay forever. If you are staying in this home forever, then that matters less.

Re: Housing Dilema? What would you do?

I would do option #1 especially since you love your location

Re: Housing Dilema? What would you do?

Re: Housing Dilema? What would you do?

I wouldn't do either. I wouldn't pump money into a house that already lost value since you likely wouldn't get that money back, and i wouldn't buy the second house in question.

I'd wait it out and try to sell for as top dollar as you can get and buy a house that works.

Re: Housing Dilema? What would you do?

I would stay and do the renos. We are in a similar boat and have decided that this is our home and will make it how we want/need it to be. I will worry about the re-sale vale in 20 years, LOL.

Re: Housing Dilema? What would you do?

Re: Housing Dilema? What would you do?

Neither. I would keep looking. Don't settle.

Re: Housing Dilema? What would you do?

Re: Housing Dilema? What would you do?

We are going through this now. We love our home and block but need more space. However we have hated the homes on the market in our price range. I want to renovate - which will give us a lot of what we need although not everything. But everyone says to wait and keep looking but how long should we put our life on hold? We dont want to put money into improving our house (necessary repairs, decor, etc) if we are moving but I also dont want to stay another 2 years in a holding pattern. Its stressful.

Re: Housing Dilema? What would you do?

Re: Housing Dilema? What would you do?

We are in the same situation. I have literally been looking for a house on and off for about 4 years. We currently live in a 4 bedroom cape. I love how we have large bedrooms and I love our neighborhood, block and neighbors. I really want all of the bedrooms upstairs and a larger kitchen, living and dining room. It's so frustrating that all of the houses we see in our price range basically need to be completely renovated. That being said, we have decided to renovate our house in the next few years. By keeping this house, we can have everything we want on our wish list for less money than starting over w someone else's house. I think that would be your best option too. If only we could be rich, right?

Housing Dilema? What would you do?

I would only move around the block if the house was in perfect condition and I didn't need to do a thing to it.

Re: Housing Dilema? What would you do?

I don't have an answer for you. I just wanted to let you know that I really do understand the difficulty you're having in this particularly area. I am in the same town as you. I'm not officially looking, but I have the itch to move. I've been looking on the mlsli website for about 6 months (but not physically visiting houses).

There are so few houses that I actually like and to get what I want we would have to spend quite a bit more money. We would probably have to put about that same amount into our current home, but I would really like a bit of a bigger property than we have. (I think our property is about 60 x 100 and there is already an extension at the back so our backyard is small).

I'm starting to think of shifting my search to surrounding areas. I see a lot more of houses that are my taste in other areas. But I really was just hoping to keep my DS in his elementary school or at least in the one that goes to the same middle school we're zoned for.