Budgeting for your home extension

Budgeting for your home extension? Here's 3 things you need to know

In order to help you with your budgeting process, we have created a breakdown of how much extending your home may be, and what costs to factor in that you may have missed.

So you’re thinking of extending your home…

That’s great! Extending your home is a cost effective way to create more space for your growing family or business without the hassle of uprooting to a totally different home, especially in today’s housing market. Unfortunately, it is usually a grey area when we think; How much does a home extension actually cost?

The short answer is; it differs from home to home! However, we have systems in place to guide you through each step of the process, so that you can keep your investment figure within what you want to spend. We always give a preliminary estimate to our clients based on their ideas and this document can assist with the early stages of borrowing money from the bank.

The short answer is; it differs from home to home!

However, we have systems in place to guide you through each step of the process, so that you can keep your investment figure within what you want to spend. We always give a preliminary estimate to our clients based on their ideas and this document can assist with the early stages of borrowing money from the bank.

1) Designers/Architects

The first initial sum that you will invest, will be on a designer since your alteration project revolves around house plans. Although it is fine to source your own, it can be very beneficial to work with one of our own designers, as we collaborate with them often and can match their strengths to the right project. Also, being the people co-ordinating and physically building your project, it is crucial that we are involved during this stage to ensure the later construction sum does not exceed your expectations. Plans from designers we don’t usually work with can contain too many unnecessary details that often exceed nearly twice the total project cost that you initially planned to spend.

2) Council Consent

The next stage to take into consideration is the consent stage. The fees here are not expensive, but they are compulsory for most major works and will be something that you will need to include into your budget.

The council charges a fee in order to process the consent(s) for your drawing that the designer will have created. These fees are dependant on the size of your land and other factors, but we will guide you through this beforehand. For more info about Council Consent and Regulations, visit the council website here.

3) Third party consultants

Further down the track in the building process, we may need to involve third party consultants such as; surveyors and structural engineers. This depends on the scope of the project, as well as what kinds of changes you’re planning to make to your home. The fees will reflect this and will be important to factor into your budget, but don’t stress! We’ll plan all of this with you well before any work begins.

Overall, your house extension cost will vary on a multitude of different factors. From what windows you’d like, what doors, carpet, tap ware, the list goes on and on. Every project is different, so it is almost impossible to give you an actual figure without finding out more about your home and intentions. Give us a call today or flick us an email and we can go about giving you an actual estimated figure from there!