Anyone put an addition on their home?

[geek96]

DH and I own a home in NNJ for the last 5 years.  It was the cheapest house in our area when we bought ($400k).  Our house is a really small ranch, 2 bed/1 bath 900 sq ft with no garage.  We have about 25% equity in our house.  The market has rebounded where similar size houses are selling for what we paid or more. 

We are expecting our second and have been talking about moving for the last two years but we are now toying with the idea of adding a second floor and bumping it out to include a garage and dining room.  I'm guessing this will be minimum $200k.  We priced a 2nd floor addition in 2013 and it was $150-$175k with no first floor changes.  DH got a large raise this year and almost doubled his salary.  We feel comfortable with increasing our payments.  What kind of loan do we look into for this type of home renovation? 

[Deleted]

I think jenny1980 was going to do something similar to this a few years ago.
I also believe heyrebekah did an addition to her house.

[humpforfree]

We have spent the last year and a half building on- we doubled+ our SF. we paid in cash and have an open home equity line of credit as back up. My H did most of the work himself and we are still about $180k in.

[heyrebekah]

I did. We paid cash, but we looked into refinancing through a lender associated with our architects. They appraised our house as it was, then determined the expected value of the house once the additions would be completed. Money for the addition would be held in escrow and disbursed to the builders at certain stages of the construction process.

Good luck with your addition!

[geek96]

Thanks. I have a lot to think about. I like that our town has very low taxes. Ours are probably one of the lowest in Bergen county. We have considered moving to the next town over which has excellent schools but it would cost a lot more to upgrade to a house that needs a lot of work and our taxes would more than double. I also like the idea of choosing all the finishes for the house myself.

[geek96]

Jan 16, 2015 11:08:23 GMT -5 @cookiemonster03 said:

This question was posed on my town FB group (NNJ) recently and it seems like add-a-levels ran about $120/sqft (I didn't do the math for other kinds of additions).

Good to know.  I guess I need to shop for more contractors because the two we got quotes from stated they be 150-175/sq ft.

[barefootcontessa]

We took our house down to the studs and concrete and put on an addition. We took out a construction loan and then converted to a 30-year fixed once construction was finished. We went this route because we loved the lot and location. We ended up designing a house that fit our needs. We are very happy with the choice. Also, we received a tax abate,net from our town because we were improving a property.