To Leave or Stay? Navigating Your Knock-Down Rebuild Dilemma
If you love your neighbourhood, but not your home, how do you know if it's time to sell-up and leave, undertake often costly and lengthy renovations or demolish your existing home and rebuild?
To Sell, Renovate or Detonate?
If you love your neighbourhood, but not your home, chances are you’ve found yourself at a fork in the road.
Do you sell-up and leave, renovate your existing home or stay and start a clean slate with a knock-down rebuild?
While there won’t be a one-size-fits-all type of answer, there’s definitely pros and cons with every option.
If you’ve put roots down in a suburb, selling-up and looking for a new place gets that little bit harder to do, especially if you have children enrolled in a local school, family living nearby or if you’ve had years (if not decades) of memories attached to the beloved place you call home.
If leaving isn’t the answer, should you overhaul your existing home with big renovations or detonate and start again? Let’s take a closer look!
Renovation realities
While the glitz and glamour of reality renovation TV can tempt you down the path of a DIY project, it’s important to understand what you’re getting yourself into, especially when you’re working with older homes.
There’s the flaws that you know about - constant leaks, cracks and the inefficient heating and cooling that’s prone to playing up.
But when it comes to renovating, it’s the pesky problems that lie beneath the surface - mould, asbestos, termites, electrical wiring and poorly-built structural beams - that you need to be more concerned with.
Not to mention, scale is important. If you’ve only got one or two rooms in mind, renovating could be the way to go. But once you’re overhauling key spaces like your kitchen, living and bathroom, or changing the orientation of your rooms, raising ceilings or installing ducted heating and cooling, it starts to get a lot trickier.
Add finding and coordinating all of your different trades on top of this, especially with current supply challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, and your DIY renovation dream can quickly turn into more of a nightmare.
Starting from scratch with a knock-down rebuild
At the end of the day, both renovating or knocking-down and rebuilding mean that you can continue being a part of the community you’ve created, going to your local coffee shop and heading down your favourite dog walking trails.
We know that the prospect of demolishing your current home can feel daunting, which is why we’ll provide you with a step-by-step plan from the outset that gives you an idea of budget, design, timing and the council and demolition process.
Our New Home Specialists work closely with our Building Managers throughout the site assessment and construction approval process, to safeguard against any additional costs from coming up, especially when it comes to factors like traffic management or crane hire.
With a wide range of home designs and facades to choose from, we’ll then help you with every detail of your new floor plan, giving you the flow, natural light and dimensions that you found yourself craving in your older home.
When you envision demolitioning and starting from scratch, it’s true that most people are drawn to the idea of modern appliances, spacious walk-in robes and of course, the big lure of open plan living. But with a complete rebuild, there’s also other benefits that don’t often command the limelight, like the amount and placement of electrical outlets.
Homes built over 50 years ago could never have anticipated just how many electrical outlets home owners of today would need on a day-to-day basis. These days, you don’t need to be a gadget lover to end up with a home full of smart devices, security systems and personalised lighting plans.
And as we’ve begun to work and study from home more and more, we’ve come to realise just how much our older homes weren’t built for modern day living - there’s only so many extra power boards and extension cords that you can deal with!
So there we have it! Does a knock-down rebuild sound like the right option for you? Start exploring our homes virtually to fall in love with your new home.
Ready to figure out your next move?
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Simonds acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the lands where we live, learn and work.