For many homeowners, particularly those with young families, having a little more space becomes a priority.
Whether the living room isn’t very accommodating, you suddenly need an extra bedroom or the idea of an office space has become a priority, expansion is a popular move.
At this point home owners have two options, they can extend what they currently have or they can sell up and move to a larger property.
To help those of you who might be stuck in the middle of this difficult decision, here are all the positives and negatives of each.
Extending
Positives:
- Cheaper – Unsurprisingly, choosing to extend your current home is quite simply cheaper than choosing to move. Deciding to knock up a conservatory at the back of your home is generally going to cost less than saving up for a home with an extra room or two in comparison to yours
- Quicker – There are lots of potential pitfalls in the process of selling and buying a home, whereas the process of extending is much more simple.
Speaking to Newcastle based house extension specialists CM Projects, they explained that “we hear from plenty of people who are fed up trying to move because it has taken them a year or more to move to a bigger place.”
“They decide extending might be a better option, and in a few weeks, we can have their extension up and fully usable.”
Negatives:
- Building site – While extensions tend to be a quicker alternative to moving, the problem you have to endure is living within a building site for a short while. This might mean you actually lose the use of at least one room in your house for a number of weeks while the extension is being erected.
- Planning Permission – There is also the little issue of planning permission. While you are a home owner and it is in fact your property, there are still a number of rule and restrictions in place depending on your local authority.
Moving
Positives:
- Better fit – While opting for an extension is quicker, it might not be exactly what you are looking for. If you are very particular about what you want, or are concerned you don’t have much space outside to extend into, finding a house on the market which better suits you seems the most logical option.
- No compromise – While putting together an extension will give you an extra room, there is no guarantee you won’t need more in the future.
Unless you have 10 acres of garden, continually extending your home just isn’t going to be feasible, so moving into a home with ample room might make more sense.
Negatives:
- Time consuming – As anyone who has tried to sell before, it can be a very lengthy and difficult process. First, you must have your house valued, potentially make some changes to boost its value, put it on the market, then wait for viewings and potential offers. All in all, recent statistics show this on average takes two months, however this is once the house is actually on the market, not taking into account the effort before or the time given to finding a new home.
- Housing market – There is also the current issue of the UK housing market. While mortgage rates are down to an all time low, rent prices are as high as they have ever been, thus making it harder for first time buyers to get on the property ladder. What this means is there are less first time buyers than there could be, narrowing the potential buyers for the home you have put on the market.
If you find yourself in a similar situation, it all is a matter of circumstance. As this list shows, if you have no space to extend or have planning issues, moving might be the best option, however if you have plenty of room, an extension is worth considering.
