Up-sizing your home
As your family grows, so does your need to expand your living space. In most cases up-sizing your home is a necessary step you will have to take at some point in your life, whether it’s for children, another family member moving in with you, or you are starting a business at home. Although it is a wonderfully exciting idea, up-sizing your home comes with many challenges. It is rarely a spontaneous decision and one that shouldn’t be made in haste. With a bigger home, come even bigger responsibilities and you need to be prepared, financially and mentally.
- Consider the costs of up-sizing
A larger home will inevitably come with higher costs in terms of property taxes, monthly mortgage, home insurance, renovation, maintenance, and utilities. You have to greatly consider paying double the bills than you do now and more room will require more items to furnish them. Depending on the reasons for wanting to up-size your home, you have to ask you yourself, if this purchase is worth the considerable increase in expenses you will have to take on.
- Can you afford it?
Either you simply want to or absolutely have to up-size your home, one of the biggest factors remains, affordability. Mortgage is not the only expense that will go up when you wish to up-size your home. The larger the property, the more effort and money it will take to keep the place running efficiently.
Up-sizing to a larger home will require more upkeep of the interior and exterior grounds, seasonal maintenance within and outside the property. Not only is it time consuming and costly to upkeep a larger home, but it also requires you to obtain certain skills to properly maintain your home. You can hire someone to do this work for you, but this will considerably add to your expenses. Larger homes will also require more electricity to power. Not only will you have to pay more to electricity electricity to your home, you will have to buy more light fixtures, appliances, and general electronics to put throughout your larger property. Not to mention, larger homes typically translate into higher property taxes. The higher the square footage of your property and house, the higher your property tax will be. Property taxes are also affected by various factors, such a great school system located within your property. Therefore, depending on the area of where you chose to up-size your home, you could be paying significantly more in taxes.
- Have you considered renovating your current home instead?
A renovation of your current home could be an option that adds value and space to your current home. Renovating your current home could be the cost effective option if you would like a larger kitchen or an upgraded bathroom. Be careful to avoid spending more money on renovations and improvements on your current home if you can’t capitalize on it if you were to sell your property.
- Choose the location wisely
If you decide that up-sizing your home is the right option for you, you must choose the location wisely. Purchasing a larger home that is located in a bad neighborhood may be affordable but it is by all means a counterproductive way of up-sizing your home. A large home in a bad neighborhood or further away from a school may be easy to buy but it will be much harder to sell.
- Sell your current home
While you may get lucky and find a buyer for your current home before buying another, you must be prepared to make other arrangements in the case that doesn’t happen. You may have found your dream home, that is larger that your current one and is in a great neighborhood, but you haven’t sold your existing property yet. Situations like this happen all the time and your dream home won’t wait for you to sell your current one. Consider all of your options, perhaps maybe renting your current home until you find the right buyer.