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PlanningJune 20267 min read
Knock-down rebuild or renovate: how we help clients decide
The answer is rarely about the house. It is about how much of it you would keep if the decision were free.
By [Name], Director
The answer is rarely about the house. It is about how much of it you would keep if the decision were free.
By [Name], Director
Clients usually arrive with a preference and want it confirmed. We try to slow that down for one meeting, because the cost difference between the two paths is smaller than most people assume, and the outcomes are very different.
A solid double brick home with rooms of a workable size, in a character street, is worth keeping. Renovation lets you retain a facade that could not be rebuilt today, and works well when the new work can be added rather than threaded through the existing structure.
If the plan involves reworking the roof, the floor level, the wet areas and the orientation, the existing house is a constraint you are paying to work around. Every trade works slower inside an existing building, and every opened wall is a chance to find something unbudgeted.
Renovating half a house often costs more per square metre than building a new one, and the two halves never quite meet.
We put both options on paper with an honest range against each before anyone commits. Occasionally the numbers land close enough that the decision comes down to how attached you are to the house, which is a perfectly good reason either way.