When looking to buy a house, we start with the basic choices of layouts. First there’s hi-ranch, then there’s split, cape, ranch, splanch, and of course, colonial. From these basic designs, people sometimes put their personal stamp on their homes by redesigning existing spaces or personalizing their interior design schemes to come up with a modern, original idea.
These redesign schemes can be as subtle as changing a room’s layout for greater comfort, such as utilizing a living room as a playroom or converting a dining room into an additional bedroom. Basically, they restructure the original idea of the room for a different purpose. Creativity knows no bounds when reimagining a space to suit the needs of the individual owner.
Some buyers look for a home that is in good condition, possibly totally renovated, deciding that even if they paid a little more for the luxury of a renovated home, their lifestyle was just too busy to get involved with buying a home that needed work, even if renovating their own space to suit their taste might be a more desirable or cost-effective preference. Buyers in this category might compromise with a renovated home done to suit someone else’s decorating taste in order to satisfy their time constraints.
A buyer with funds for a down payment and closing costs, but with a tight budget, might not have the means to undertake a renovation project and might also compromise by purchasing a home that is in move-in condition with the idea of possibly putting off all unnecessary but desired renovations for the future.
Obviously renovating is not for everyone. To some, just the idea of taking on such a large project is very overwhelming, but if renovating is something you have considered and do not know where to begin or whether you could even handle the management of such a project, here are some tips which could possibly assist you when considering such a project.
The key to putting together a large renovation project, other than handing it over to a contractor with a blank checkbook is to structure the project in groupings. If you make a list of all the repairs and upgrades you want to achieve, and then break them down into smaller groups by achievable timeframe, from immediate, to 2-3 years from now, and five years from now, you will find it much easier to deal with the entire project. Dealing with the “must do before I move in” and putting them in the first group, which I like to call the “basic needs” group, and then setting up the proceeding groups into categories of upgrades based on their priority of what is important first can make what was originally a large project into groups of smaller projects that are more manageable.
Doing your renovations in this manner will also make it easier for you to budget each grouping without feeling overwhelmed. Once you have broken down your list into various groups, you can ask contractors for estimates for each group separately, so as to allow you to plan each project according to your own pace. n
Anessa Cohen lives in Cedarhurst and is a Licensed Real Estate Broker (Anessa V Cohen Realty) with over 20 years of experience offering residential, commercial and management real estate services. You are invited to visit her website at www.avcrealty.com . She can be reached at 516-569-5007 or Readers are encouraged to send any questions or comments by email to anessa@avcrealty.com.
