Today’s blog will be looking at things from a little different perspective.

My wife and I are thinking of buying a new house. So, we’ve been out looking at houses. It’s tough. We like our house (like, not love) and we really like where we live. As we look around, we wonder if we really want to move. We definitely want more space. We have a three bedroom house and would like to have a four bedroom house. We have a two car garage, and really need more space there (I could fill a six car garage). The yard is a good size, and fenced, like we need it. Enough about that.

What it comes down to is that we are thinking about and talking about renovating vs. buying a new home. We have pretty much ruled out adding a new master suite, which would be perfect but expensive. The neighborhood will only support about $30k in improvements… max. If we didn’t want to update the kitchen and baths, we might be able to squeak by on $30k, but I really don’t think we would see much of that back out of the house in resale. The kitchen will eat up about $13k and the baths will probably chew up about $5k between them. I think that is about all that we should really try to do. Those costs will be largely supported in resale. In fact, I think they might pay back enough that they would be worth doing even if we decided to sell in the short term.

In the mean time, we will keep looking to see if anything grabs us. I know how many buyers feel as they look to buy a house when they aren’t relocating. It’s tough.

Don’t hesitate to shoot Lane a message if you have any questions, or need any help. And check out the new links for FREE Property Searching, FREE Comparative Market Analysis and FREE Market Reports. They are near the top of the page…