If you could add another bedroom and bathroom toYour house by doing your loft for 48k would you ?

[LovelyYellowLabrador]

Would you do this ?

Yes I would

I’m thinking of doing this.

Absolutely but only if the bathroom is a reasonable size and properly useable, not just squeezed in and impractical.

Well I would because in my area it would add far more than £48k to the price.

But that doesn’t mean you should! It all depends on how much the extra space is worth to you, how much value it would add to the house, how tight money would be if you did this etc etc.

No, I wouldn't get it back I don't think.

It would be easier and cheaper to move to a bigger house around here i think.

We plan to do this but it’s because we want the extra bedroom not because of any purely financial decision.

Yes, if I needed the space AND it added at least that to the value of my house.

I haven’t done it because we don’t need the space, can’t be faffed with the disruption and it would likely cost much more than £48k. It would add at least £100k though but I will leave it to a future owner!

It would cost me that to move so for me makes sense.

We have done it in two houses. Last one was more like 60k-70k. We didn't do it for the investment but because it gives us so much extra living and storage space and quality of living. Especially if it otherwise means that one child would have to have the box room it's well worth it. We prioritised it over a kitchen extension (which would have been substantially more expensive).

100% - We are doing ours for more than that this year. It's by far the cheapest way to get an extra bedroom in our area.

Yes

No, we've already spent a lot on the house, we don't need the space and I suspect we may move in the next 5 years.

We are in the process of doing this now (stairs are being plastered as we speak).

Makes sense for us - we lived in a 3 bed semi in London/Surrey borders suburbs that we are both settled in and could not afford to move out of. But DS is a broad 5ft 9 year old so the box room so typical of these houses was rapidly growing too small for him and more permanent wfh arrangements for me and DH mean that at least one of us will be here each day so that room will become an office freeing up the front room again.

DIsruption has been fine actually. Cost wise ours is around 48-49k to get the room painted/carpeted and the rest of the house returned (we had new doors so door frames painted). But moving the rooms around, getting new furniture etc will cost I think another 15k

absolutely.
the jump to the next house up is prohibitively expensive - far more than 50K. sadly for us I think a loft conversion wouldn't yield enough space to be worth the cost, but if I could get a double bedroom and a loo/shower room, I would.

We did it about 5 yrs ago along with kitchen extension. My DH uses the room as an office and the en suite which is probably too big is rarely used anymore as we’re planning to sell and want to keep it looking good. It didn’t change as much for us as I thought it would. Will be interesting to see if it has added value when we come to sell.

Only if we had two kids sharing a room and needed another bedroom, or if lack of another bathroom was a real problem (and then only if the bathroom gained would be a proper one not a pokey, dark, smelly moulding cupboard ... ).
So not "to add value" - far too disruptive - but only if it would really improve quality of life.

Also note that you will need to factor in cost of changing all doors in house to fire doors for all habitable rooms or adding smoke alarms (might be to every room). We changed the doors but have smoke alarms in every level as well.

Depends on the value of the house, before and after, obviously!

No-one can give you a sensible answer outside that context.

Never upgrade so much that yours is the most valuable house on the street, is a good rule of thumb. Because value is about location, above all. You can't extend your way out of the local price threshold.

Shit, is that how much a loft conversion costs these days?

I was thinking about half that. But I just want stairs, skylights, insulation and fairly basic finishing, not high end fittings or a bathroom or dormer.

I suppose for the OP, it depends what the cost of moving to a bigger house is, which could well be a lot more, plus what you're gaining, eg would the new bathroom be a second bathroom (good) or a 4th one (you already have more than anyone could really want/need). Plus any detriment, eg loss of a useful bedroom to make way for the stairs?

Although I know someone who's just done this and they've turned the box room into a home office and have gone from 2 bed and a box room to three decent sized bedrooms, extra shower room and home office.

Get an estate agent round (or three) and ask if you will get the value back or more.

That's what we did, the answer was yes, so we did it. Love it and no regrets but absolutely would not have done it if it wouldn't make the money back.

Depends where you live and house prices. Around here you'd be laughing your head off to get that done for so little. Buying a property with an extra bedroom and bathroom would mean a jump of three times that amount.

@BarbaraofSeville that is pretty much what we are doing so it is worth it. In my area 48k is about right and that is for the basic build/plastering/decorating etc.

@VitaminBCDE it could be included - our price included that

100%. Both for us, and for the fact that it would add more than that in value to the property.

We have a very badly converted loft already, and we're looking at doing it 'properly' which would give us two doubles and a bathroom up there. I think it'll cost more than £48k but it will be worth it on the way we use the space.

Depends where you are, but anywhere around here £48k would be massively cheaper than moving from say a 3 bed to a 4 bed house.

So if you could really do with the extra space it’d be a no-brainier.