What would YOU do??

[minnieandmickeymouse]

If you owned a 1,288 sq ft ranch style home no basement, no upstairs, 4 acres of nice land, on the end of road, full private back yard, nice quiet neighborhood. Only 3 bedrooms one of them very small, only one very small bathroom. You have 4 kids, and you are a dog breeder of small dogs (about 15lbs) you now have 4 females and 2 males. You are feeling very closterfobic (sp), sick of the small home.Going nuts in your home since you are also a SAHM You only paid 45,000 for this home, you have a nice small payment.

Now your home is valued at 145,000 so you could have about 100,000 to go toward something else... Would YOU....

a) build an upstairs (if your home can support one, we are not sure if it can! )

b) add on outward. It would be more costly then going up, and you would need to put in another wood stove to heat the addition.

c) buy land, and you would need to find land with 4 acres or more, for under 50,000 in order to be able to afford doing the rest. We would be getting a modular to put on the land.

d) Buy a home, although you would be paying about 250,000-300,000 on a home to find one with the room needed and acres needed for family size and the dogs.

AND why would you choose what you chose to do????

Any advice for me?? My head is spinning from all the decisions

Also for the town we are in, our property tax is more the I'd like to pay. For example. We currently pay about 2,200 a year, when they valued the home for 67,000. The home up the street was valued at 160,000 and they pay 4,000!!! So if we build up, we could be looking at doubling our property tax.
In the next town there is a home that is valued at 300,000 and they only pay 3,000 a year in property tax!

 

[BuzzBoyMom]

You've got to do the research.

First - tell a real estate agent that you are considering moving to a local town...give him/her your must-have's and likes and see what is out there. In the meantime, contact 2 or 3 builders and get estimates for what you could do...both building up or out and weigh the options. Without the numbers, it is too hard for me to decide.

 

[jcsbama]

Well, for the land and neighborhood, I would expand my current house, even if it meant higher taxes. Where I live, there would be no way of having that much land and a house big enough for everyone in your family, including the dogs without paying minimal $500k. Heck, just the 4 acres here would be very costly.

I would have to assume that if you only paid $45K for the house and land, that the land is more valuable than the house. Could you knock the house down to it's frame and then build on from there? Finding a good architect and contractor could explain your options better with what to do with the house. Of course, you would probably need to find temporary housing during the construction. Just my .02.

 

[minnieandmickeymouse]

I forgot, we would have to live through the construction.

When we bought the house it was only with 1 acre, and it was valued at 65,000. We bought it from my father, so we were lucky.
We then bought 3 acres out back of our home from my uncle, for only 2,500! Again we are lucky.
I have wanted to build up for soooooo long. And next year is when we decided we should do it.And could afford to do so.
We have a 28x46 home, and would would only be adding 28x32 on top. I would be putting in another livingroom up there, so we would have room in our current livingroom for puppies to be raised, one small kids bedroom, and one master bedroom,and a bathroom. That would be giving us a total of possible 5 bedrooms, but one bedroom downstairs would be turned in my office and workout room.

How much would a 28x32 addition be? We were thinking we could just have them do the frame work, DH can do the rest, just not the electrical.

 

[BuzzBoyMom]

I forgot, we would have to live through the construction.



I didn't forget that one....that's the only reason I'm suggesting looking for something else...ya never know what is out there and you could move right in

 

[budbeerlady]

How is your property laid out and depending on your local zoning laws? Could you sell your home with say half an acre or a acre? Then put your home (you mentiained a manufactured home) on the side or back dependiing on your lay out?

That is our plan one day, we have 10.5 acres so we put a manufacture home to the side on the 1st acre so we can easment to the back and put up our cabin in 10 years or so.

If you love where you live, then I would build off the back or side if you need to. Maybe just add a big (we did 14 * 14) 3 season room on the back. It is great for all dds toys and stuff. The kids can play out there and it wasnt too costly. Or to the side add a bedroom with a small bath.

 

[tw1nsmom]

If it were me, I would turn the current home over to the business. You could build the modular home right next to it, possibly with a breezeway connecting the two. It doesn't sound as though you have a lot of storage, so you could use one of the current bedrooms for storage or a guest bedroom and the other for an office.

 

[Tigger&Belle]

We were never quite in your situation, however we were living in a small house. About 1800sq feet--3BR, 2 1/2 BA, small kitchen, split level house, dining area, basement on a nice lot that backed to woods. We had to decide if we wanted to stay there and enlarge that house or move to a larger house, giving up the nice lot.

We ended up moving. We knew we wanted to stay in the same school district, which was the hard part. We ended up in a 3 level house--4 BR, formals, study on main level, big kitchen, big basement that we had professionally finished when we first moved in, walk out daylight basement. However, we had to give up our lot that backed to woods--we now back to neighbors, which took some getting used to.

It was a great choice for us. Moving was a pain, but living with that construction would have been even worse and we did not want to price our house out of the neighborhood. And in our case our neighborhood is a better place to raise our kids (lots of other kids).

 

[FreshTressa]

If it were me, I would turn the current home over to the business. You could build the modular home right next to it, possibly with a breezeway connecting the two. It doesn't sound as though you have a lot of storage, so you could use one of the current bedrooms for storage or a guest bedroom and the other for an office.

That is probably what I would do too. Sounds the most painless and least expensive.

The only problem would be lower resale value than an addition, but if they aren't planning on leaving, then it shouldn't be a big deal and they will always have the value of the land.

 

[mickeyminnie]

I think I would explore the idea of the modular home being put on your current property and then either convert the current house to business purposes or tear it down. It isn't a big house to begin with, you could add on, but if you get the modular then everything is new and will flow nicely. An addition needs to be done just right to flow with the current house, often time I think people end up redoing most of the current house to try and get the flow correct, especially when you add so much space. When you just add a family room and master bedroom type addition it seems to work better.