In today's housing market, it's become increasingly difficult to find a home that ticks all of the boxes on your wish list. Buying a fixer-upper can be an excellent way to create your dream home while keeping construction costs down. And of course, by investing in the value of your home, renovations can pay off big time when you’re ready to sell again. So, if you're on the hunt for a home that's not quite perfect (yet) here are five key considerations to ensure your fixer-upper is the perfect canvas for your future design projects.
Whether your home is built with a slab-on-grade foundation (built directly on the ground) or with a crawl space (an unfinished, shallow space between the ground and the first floor) can make a big difference when it comes to renovation. A crawl space provides easy access to the systems located underneath the house, allowing you to easily make changes or updates to plumbing, mechanical and electrical features. Slab-on-grade construction can make it difficult and expensive to access and modify these systems. For gut renovations a crawl space is your friend.
Slab-on-grade or crawl space are the two most common options out here on the west coast where Headlands is based; in other parts of the country such as the northeast you’re more likely to encounter basements which offer their own pros and cons for remodeling.)
A good foundation is critical to the stability and safety of a house. And here’s the thing, newer foundations (1990s and later) have a significant amount of rebar compared with those of prior decades adding stability to the structure. So, if you plan to add lots of new openings (e.g. new windows and doors that make your walls work harder structurally) and definitely if you want to build up a story, a newer foundation may support your changes without the need for any improvement to the foundation. However, if you’ve fallen in love with an older house and still want to go up a story, you can indeed improve an old foundation if you’re willing to incur the big expense of foundation work. (And as just discussed above, this will be easier and less expensive if you’re working with a crawl space and not slab-on-grade foundation.)
If your renovations don’t include building up, an older foundation might serve you just fine. It’s normal for a foundation to have tiny visible cracks, but be on the lookout for any cracks big enough to fit your pinky finger into— a sign that you may be headed for a repair.
Unless a previous homeowner completed a foundation upgrade, the age of the foundation will be the same as the house. This information can be typically found in the disclosure packet provided by a realtor/seller.
When it comes to plumbing, planning for the future can save you time and money. “Wet walls” are walls with water, vent, or waste lines. Areas where plumbing lines are grouped together— think a bathroom that backs up to a laundry room or kitchen— can expedite access to plumbing. So, if you're looking to renovate your future kitchen and bathrooms, make note of wet wall locations. If you’re willing to keep bathrooms and therefore plumbing in the same location, this will be significantly less expensive than moving a bathroom to a new location. However, if you do want to move a bathroom, is there another wet wall location you could move it to? Adding plumbing to an existing wet wall will be less expensive than adding plumbing to a far flung corner of the house that doesn’t currently have any water.
The placement and size of windows can have a big impact on a home's natural light and overall atmosphere. Moving or expanding existing windows can be a costly, though sometimes highly desirable, part of updating an older home. As you consider a potential home, be on the lookout for low-cost ways to add light including swapping solid doors for options that will let in more light and any high windows. High windows can be a cost-effective renovation gem, as these openings can typically have their sills lowered without materially affecting the structural integrity of the walls. This means it’s much cheaper and easier to lower a sill than it is to expand, raise or add a window.
Sure, you can make massive changes to any structure, but the bigger the change, naturally the more involved and costly. This is particularly important with big ticket and integral features, like roof framing (e.g. trusses vs a flat roof). A good question to ask yourself is “Does the vision you have for your dream home and the renovations work with, or against, the existing house?” It’s certainly not to say you shouldn’t consider vaulting that low ceiling (in fact, check out our vaulted ceiling renovation here) but at some point, increasingly massive transformation to the key features of the house may not be a good return on investment. Some houses will just better fit your vision for renovation than others, and if something like the style of the roofline is on your wish list, consider finding a house that supports that vision from the get-go.
By factoring in these 5 considerations, you’ll be well on your way to finding the house of your (renovation) dreams! Happy house hunting!
Need help finding the perfect fixer-upper? Headlands can join you and your real estate agent for viewing appointments to provide insight on renovation potential. If you're house hunting in the San Francisco Bay Area, Sonoma, Marin or Napa counties, contact us to learn more about this service.