You’re shopping for the home of your dreams, and you’re wavering. You found a home you love, and it’s at the top of your budget. It has everything you’ve ever wanted in a house. It’s perfect, and it requires nothing to move in and make yourself right at home. You also found another home you really like, and it has a lot of potential to be amazing. It’s got some of what you want, and it has amazing bones. It’s not priced quite as high, and you have a chance to save $30,000 – $50,000 if you choose this house over the dream home. The decision is tough. Buy the perfect home, or buy the one that needs a little work?
The answer is not black or white. It depends on what kind of work the fixer-upper needs to turn it into the dream home and whether you’re doing the work yourself. If you buy a house that has everything you want, you get what you want without the cost of taking on projects. These are some of the biggest projects homeowners take on when they own a home, and you might just get out of paying for them if you buy the home that already has each one.
A Custom Kitchen
When you buy a home with a custom kitchen, homeowners are getting most if not all of the money they put into the kitchen back. However, you’re not taking on the work. It’s expensive to create a custom kitchen in a home, and it’s always welcome to avoid paying for that on your own if someone else took on that job for you. Cabinets, pulls, sinks, countertops, backsplash. You might pay dollar for dollar what the former owner paid, but you’re saving weeks of construction stress in the process.
Basement Remodels
If you live in an area where basements are present, you know it’s not cheap to fix one up. You also don’t get full value of the remodel back when you sell. You get a lot of it back, but you’re not going to get 100% of the value back when you sell. If you buy a home with a finished basement, you’re automatically winning financially.
A Swimming Pool
When you buy a home with an existing pool, you’re not going to find the need to search for pool financing. It’s one costly project that’s already been handled for you, and the best part is you get to enjoy the luxury of owning a home with a resort-style pool without going through the building process, the permit process, or the impatience some homeowners feel when they add such a great addition the backyard. Pools are big sellers when it comes to eventually reselling your home, so you’ll find this one costly project is one you enjoyed while you lived here and again when you profit from the sale of your home.
Bathroom Remodels
If you buy a home with remodeled bathrooms, you’re saving a lot of money. the cost of remodeling a bathroom is expensive, and you do get most of it back. Bathrooms and kitchens do sell homes. However, you’re not paying for all the expensive plumbing work, which saves you a bundle of money when you break down the price.
Landscaping
Landscaping is expensive. It’s always worth it, but it’s not a cheap project to take on. When you purchase a home with landscaped lawns, you come out ahead. It’s a costly project that takes a long time to complete depending on the complexity of the design, and you get to avoid a lot of the cost and much of the hassle.
When you break down all of these things and compare a house that needs this work done to one that doesn’t, it’s almost always wiser to buy the one with all the work already done. Unless the price of the fixer-upper is so low you’ll always come out ahead, there are some projects you’re better off allowing someone else to pay for you so you can sit back and enjoy all their effort and hard work for a fraction of the cost.
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