Should I stay or should I go?
Around Thanksgiving, two different clients of mine called me for advice. Their problem was the same, more or less: “My kitchen doesn’t work for me. I hate the idea of re-doing it and I hate the idea of moving.”
If Thanksgiving made you hate your kitchen, here are the things you should think about to figure out what is best for you:
1. What is the approximate cost of the new kitchen?
2. What is the cost of trading up or of renting short-term?
3. Which hassle is worse: selling this house and moving to a new home, moving to an apartment for the construction period, or living in the house without a kitchen? How expensive is each of these options, in time and money?
1. To figure out what a kitchen costs, go somewhere that sells cabinets and counters. Ask how much the number of cabinets and length of counter you want would cost, installed. Then add appliances and flooring. Then add 25% for buffer.
2. I give my clients a CMA on their current home and talk them through evaluating real estate costs.
3. To know your response to the hassle, you may need a therapist!
But if you know yourself, imagine each scenario: Imagine selling, buying and packing. Imagine packing, leaving, and coming back. Imagine living in a house where you are cooking in the dining room and washing the dishes in the bathroom for 3-4-6-10 months. Imagine communicating with contractors, either in your new kitchen or your next house.
Which is best for you? Can you afford to do what is best for you?
My first household of clients decided to stay put and re-do their kitchen. The other is still figuring it out.
What would you do? What have you done?
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We are considering the EXACT same scenarios. We will probably move - we decided that once we put the money into this house, unless we live here for 25 more years, we will never get that money back out and don't want to have the highest priced home in the neighborhood. The RIO on a new and better neighborhood - is where we feel comfortable putting our money. We don't love this house that much.
We just finished making our decision - and we are trading up :). We are quite excited and although the market isn't the greatest in years we figure we can still get a good price on our place and get a better price on the next place to make it worthwhile. The odd thing is, we are not alone - several of our friends are planning to do the same in the next few months - they made enough in the upswing market to take a bit off now during the downturn that they still are in a good place to buy something bigger. Plus those of our friends who are renting say the market and interest rates are good enough now to make them buy. In our neighborhood in the city things appear to be selling, so fingers crossed hopefully ours will sell too :). Good luck to everyone! Thanks Rona!
We'll be redoing the kitchen, though possibly on a smaller scale than what I'd hoped. Our kitchen was designed in the 1950s, and our house will be hard to sell unless we do something to update it. Plus, there are at least 3 similar houses in our neighborhood which have been languishing on the market since August.
Good! Buy our house--enormous kitchen (27 x 14)!! Perfect for Thanksgiving. 14 acres to raise your own turkeys too!
We are hoping that people are going to start stepping up to buy again since we had to move before selling our beautifully renovated house. Our house is priced at what it actually cost to rebuild so we'll lose money on it unfortunately.
Anyway, we plan to redo our current kitchen. 70's style kitchen currently with no dishwasher!! So, as soon as we sell our other house--we will spend lots of money on the kitchen (and anywhere else we've had to scrimp the past 8 months!!)
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