Every homeowner wants to increase the curb appeal of their property, but you’re not sure if a home addition like a family room is the way to go about it. Can you really add value to your home like this? We did the research to bring you the answer.
Home additions such as family rooms typically raise the value of your property by about 30 percent for every 1,000 square feet of space added. Outside of curb appeal, having a family room in your home will give you more space and another place to make precious family memories.
In this guide, we’ll explore both the upsides and downsides of a home addition so you can decide whether getting a family room built is in your best interest. Keep reading!
How Much Value Will A Family Room Add To Your Home If You Build One?
You’ve been debating for months now whether it’s advantageous to build a family room in your existing home. You have the budget (at least, you believe you do), but you’re just not sure if the addition will increase your home value or decrease it.
According to real estate experts, more square footage is always good. If your home addition is at least 1,000 square feet, then your home’s sale price could go up by about 30 percent after getting the room built. The value would be higher if the addition is 2,000 square feet.
Now, your average living room is 340 square feet. Family rooms may be about the same size or even smaller. Thus, you’d have to plan a few other additions along with the family room for the project to be worth your while.
If you need some ideas, experts say that bedroom and bathroom additions are among the most valuable that you can tack onto your home.
The Pros and Cons Of Adding A New Room To Your Home
Now that you know your home’s curb appeal could shoot up by adding more square footage, you might feel more inclined to finally design the family room of your dreams.
Before you make your decision permanent, read through this handy section of pros and cons.
Pros
You’ll Have A Bigger Home
Undoubtedly, one of the biggest factors that go into the decision-making of which home to purchase is the home’s size. You might have otherwise fallen in love with your home’s many charms, but you have to admit, you have always wished it could be bigger. By adding a family room, that wish will finally come to fruition.
You Might Not Have To Move
Space is such a concern when shopping for a home because a sizable property has enough room for the whole family. Perhaps it was just you and your spouse or partner when you moved in, or you, your spouse/partner, and one child.
You’ve since had more kids, and that makes a small home feel even more cramped. Until now, you might have been considering moving to a bigger house in a different neighborhood.
You would hate to sell your house considering it’s in such great shape and has so many amazing family memories, but you just need something bigger.
It will certainly be less time-intensive to add to your home than to put your current home on the market, sell, look for a new home, bid, get accepted, make the down payment, and move.
Depending on what you were going to spend on a house, the home addition might be more cost effective as well.
You’ll Make The House All Your Own
Sure, you can paint your home any color and hang up all your favorite art pieces, but the bones of the house, so to speak, were established long before you arrived.
By getting a family room built on the property, this is your chance to make a mark on the home’s layout.
Cons
A Bigger Home Takes More Time To Clean
Having more room in your house (and more privacy to boot) sure is nice, but it does have its downsides as well.
Now that your home is bigger than ever, you’ll spend more time than you once did keeping the home in tip-top condition. You have a whole extra room—or maybe two—to clean every single week.
That can get exhausting, as it’s not like you can let the cleanliness of the rest of the house go in the interim.
You’ll Never Recoup 100 Percent Of What You Spend
Even if you do crank up your home’s resale value by 30 percent through your new home additions, you will never make back 100 percent of what you spend on the family room or any other rooms you have built.
In the next section, we’ll go over the expenses for a new family room. If you’re okay with not seeing that money back in your pocket, even with a better home resale value, then you’re ready to proceed with the project.
However, if you have some qualms, then perhaps you want to think longer before pulling the trigger on this big addition.
Additions Are Expensive And Taxing
It’s not only the expense you have to think about as you mull over whether you’ll add a family room to your home. It’s how mentally draining home construction can be. You’ll have to meet with various contractors, request quotes, and compare the costs of service.
Once you hire a contractor you like, they’ll spend weeks (or possibly months) in and out of your home doing work.
This can strip you of the peace and quiet that you’re supposed to enjoy each day. After all, home is a place of refuge, but it won’t be until the project is finished.
It’s not like the team is going to work late into the night and probably not on weekends either, but they could be there first thing in the morning and well into the day.
If you work from home or are a stay-at-home parent, all the banging, hammering, drilling, and commotion is enough to make you batty!
How Much Does It Cost To Build A Family Room?
We said we would, so let’s take this section to dive deeply into the costs of getting a family room built on your property.
A living room is 16x20. Assuming your family room will be 20x20, a typical quote would be between $42,000 and $88,000 with a national average of $65,000.
Even on the lower end, you won’t pay less than $15,000 for a project of this magnitude.
It’s not unheard of for a family room addition to cost as much as $200,000, but that’s assuming you want every amenity available.
What exactly is your money going towards? That’s a great question, so let’s take a closer look at an estimated cost breakdown:
- Designing the family room: $2,740 to $9,450
- Framing for the family room: $2,800 to $5,200
- Building the foundation: $2,400 to $6,200
- HVAC ductwork: $1,933 to $4,767
- Interior painting: $1,216 to $3,269
- Flooring: $1,100 to $4,500
- Plumbing: $975 to $2,900
- Siding: $800 to $10,800
- Roofing: $800 to $8,000
- Electrical work: $630 to $1,930
- Drywall: $600 to $1,200
- Site preparation: $400 to $800
- Doors: $393 to $2,013 each
- Building permits: $250 to $850
- Insulation: $200 to $1,600
- Windows: $193 to $845
The above costs do factor in the fees for labor and installation. Keep in mind that the cost of a home addition will vary according to where you live.
More expensive cities are going to have higher building costs than cities and towns in which the cost of living is lower.
There’s also the question of building up versus building out. When you build out, it means you’re adding a ground-level home addition.
This is a viable option if you have only a single-story home or if you have a spacious backyard. Do keep in mind that you’re cutting into that backyard space by building out.
The other option is to build up, which refers to adding more home to your property’s second story or even a third story.
You needn’t have a bigger foundation for building up, so the cost of your family room project could go down by about $6,000 if you opt for this approach.
Building up is beneficial if your yard is small, you already have an existing second or third story, and you want the family room upstairs rather than downstairs.
Building up is not exclusively cheaper though. If you need to reinforce the home’s foundation before building, then that’s going to take the $6,000 you would have saved and chew into it considerably.
In Closing
Family rooms are beautiful, spacious areas to foster family togetherness. Adding a family room to your home can increase your property’s curb appeal, but more so than that, it’s worthwhile to have more space for you and your family to call your own!
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