Help! Is an extension worth it or withdraw house offer?

[Jellybeans00]

We have just put an offer in a house in North Yorkshire. It is a 3-bed detached for £400k. To make it work for our family we would need to add an extension and that was the plan. However, we have just been researching and think we have underestimated how much extensions are now and now doubting that we could afford to do it.

We would be looking at getting a two storey side extension about 3m x 7m. Hoping to get a 4th bedroom and extended kitchen/utility for that. Researching we have found that average may be 2k per square meter, so would be looking at £84k, but I’m assuming that’s not including VAT?

So all in everything, including VAT - would it be £100k or likely more?

Our alternative is to withdraw our offer and go for a 4-bed at £480-500k to get that extra bedroom we need.

We really don’t know what to do. We don’t want to make a costly mistake

Why have you put an offer in if you can’t afford to do the work needed? Of course withdraw the offer. You can’t afford that house.

Well the alternative sounds like it will cost you about the same as the extension but without the hassle and potential even higher costs of an extension.. I would go for the second option to be honest. I've been trying to get my extension started for three years now, it's a nightmare.

Either way to get what you want you’ll either have to buy a bigger house or do the extension
how long do you anticipate being in this house you have the offer on?

You need planning permission I assume for an extension that size, what if you don’t get it. Plus do you want to live in a building site for possibly months. My mate had an e tension, it is lovely but took about 4 months longer than anticipated and cost 80k in the end and this was almost a decade ago.

You also need a decent builder and some are booked up for months.

Do not do this.

Hi Everyone, thanks for your helpful replies.

@YesThatsATurdOnTheRug so yes that’s how I saw it. Ultimately we would prefer the 3-bed with the extension as it’s a slightly better plot although smaller garden. What I’m worried about is the extension costing more than I’ve estimated above, and like you say the hassle. As such the 4-bed may be the ‘safer’ and ‘easiest’ option.

@rubyslippers we were intending on staying there for many years

@ViciousCurrentBun thanks for your view. It does sound like it could be a lot of hassle. Although I’ve got my estimate above (which we could afford) you just hear so many horror stories about cost, delays, cowboy builders

The 4-bed house came up after we were having negotiations about the 3 bed (and the 3 bed is by the far the best we have seen come up in many months so we didn’t want to miss out), but considering the work needed we are now thinking that it may be more cost effective and easier to go for that one instead.

Appreciate your comments - thank you 🙏

It’s always good to hear real-life experiences of extensions as theoretically it sounds doable but realistically I’m doubting it x

Way better to get the 4-bed. A two-storey extension is a big undertaking even when you can comfortably afford it. Get the house that's big enough to start with and then you can enjoy living there.

@Pinkdelight3 I think this is great advice and is becoming clearer the more I seek guidance. Thank you 🙏 It sounds like it could be very time consuming and stressful. Like you said we could just be enjoying that time living there with also having young children which would be so much better ❤️

The issue with any extension is the foundations and not knowing what you will find when you dig down. It needs a solid soil and you don't know what you will get until you dig. We are not on strip foundations due to being on a hill, so our houses are all built as as concrete slabs with piles underneath. When they dug our extension they had to go deeper than they thought to match the slab under our house. This meant we had to fill a waist high void under the extension with visqueen (damp proof material) and fill it with hardcore. No choice as building regs wouldn't sign off otherwise. That cost extra.

Then you have to consider access issues to get materials to the site, so if they put bricks/blocks on the drive they have to barrow the whole lot to where they need bricks. That takes manual labour and slows the job, whereas if they can crane it over the fence into the garden it is more accessible.

Wherever they build they will need to mix mortar, store sand, cement, hardcore, blocks, bricks. Our back garden was completely trashed and we needed to pay for it to be landscaped afterwards and I had very clean and tidy builders. If all this is on the drive then the drive just needs cleaning. Don't underestimate the dust, disruption and hardest for some people, decision making.

I am a sahm with children in late primary so was here for the job, made all the decisions, but I had done a lot of research beforehand so had bought electric sockets, lights, sourced all the kitchen cabinets, appliances, sink, tap, worktop, flooring and tiles. I am very decisive which is why Dh did all the school runs working from home over a decade ago but this isn't our first reno so we knew what was coming.

Personally I would try to buy a ready done house, extension costs have become ridiculous over the last 5 years. Most build quotes are to first fix, ie plastered shell with wires and pipes coming out of the walls but no sockets that is second fix. I am not saying completely rule it out but consider this the more difficult route.

Just to echo the PP's advising to go for the bigger house. TBH even £100K sounds like it might not be enough to cover what you have in mind, but I am in the South East, so it may be different where you are. Bear in mind that budgets almost always overshoot due to unforeseen problems / escalating costs.

I've just gone through a major renovation and would never do it again. Renovation makes sense if your needs change and you really don't want to move, or you love doing up houses and can save money doing a lot of it yourself, or fixer-uppers are all you can afford now and you are happy to wait years to do the necessary works. But you are in the position of having the ability to find a house that ticks all of your boxes, without having to face the stress, upheaval and costs of a major project.

@HangerOverTreeFruit wow - thanks so
much for the detailed response. This is super helpful and you sound very knowledgable! I was actually looking forward to the extension to the designing and project managing to make it ours. But we haven’t done an extension before and there is a lot of unknowns for me with getting builders involved. We did do our kitchen ourselves (design and fitted) but that’s it. I understand this is a completely different ball game and a lot more work. It does seem likely that it would be more cost effective to fork out for the 4-bed now than do the extension.

@ClematisBlue49 . Totally agree with everything you’ve said. It’s really reassuring hearing other people say it and confirm my suspicions. I am definitely worried about the 100k not being enough so it does seem more riskier. Even though you wouldn’t do a renovation again I hope you are now enjoying it :)

Great to hear all your experiences. Definitely food for thought and has really helped with our decision 🙏🙏

@Jellybeans00 we chose a builder who came under the VAT threshold, so the way it worked was he quoted for the whole job but we paid the trades individually and paid the builder at the end of every week. He told us his day rate and the day rate of the labourer, gave us an invoice every week and that is what we paid. His Dad is an accountant and it meant he could earn £85k now, or £90k after April and not have to be VAT registered.

He rang the builder's merchant, put the order in, passed the phone to me and I paid over the phone. No goods or services went through the builder's bank, just his wage. I paid the electrician directly, same with the plasterer, window/door installer, roofer, chap who dug out the foundations and the chap who came in the dirt grabber truck and it did add up to the original quote plus the bit extra for the damp proofing/hardcore. It also meant I learned everyone's day rate too.

We are in Yorkshire but my builder has retired now. So no upfront payments, no worry or risk on either side. You just go into it with your eyes open. Our house isn't very old so unlike my sister's stunning Edwardian house there were no real surprises. Even the structural engineer cost under £200 (over a decade ago) as it was a standard construction, we emailed him with photos and he emailed structural beam details back. Welcome to Yorkshire, no need to get out of your chair if you can help it.

Just putting that in case anyone else thinks about an extension and manages to find a builder who operates like this.

We love this house, we will be here a long time and it was worth the investment but we had the money and contingency to do it. It was stressful for me in terms of me making all the decisions but Dh and I have been together almost 30 years so he trusted me. If we did bring him into the discussion he looked like a deer in headlights so we patted him on the head and let him go back to work

Lots of videos on youtube by builders doing extensions. Good luck whatever you decide.

Are you sure it would get planning permission, have others done similar? Seems a bit of a risk.

I'm over the border in Lancs. It's if anything cheaper here to get work done, but I very much doubt you'd get it done for anything like 100K once all the bills were in, sorry.

Thank you so much everyone for your replies 🙏, including @BlueMongoose @HangerOverTreeFruit @LIZS

This is a slightly delayed reply as we have been doing a lot of discussions and calculations. I think we have decided to do a U-turn and stick with the 3-bed. We have been trying to think of ways to make the space work for us and we think we have a solution by adding a large orangery on the back within regulations so that planning permission is not required. Within this space we would hope to extend the kitchen with a dining table and space for the kids toys and and area to WFH. My youngest would have the box bedroom which is 2.5 sq meter smaller than the room she would have in the 4-bed. Vs the 4-bed, the 4-bed would have one more extra bedroom, a slightly bigger kitchen (still galley) and dining room. So I think we could get a theoretically useable house for £30-50k less. Would be great to hear your thoughts on this solution.

I’m hoping to budget £50k for the orangery and a few bits round the house. I will get some quotes but wondering if anybody has any experience of Hup extension/orange ties which promote a lot of benefits or other prefab extension solutions?

Thanks so much in advance!

Ah, I remember the orangery phase of considering how to make a house work. We didn't get one in the end and no regrets - there's lots of thread on here about the whole 'too hot in the summer too cold in the winter' issues with such solutions and I've never heard anyone raving about it working for them, so we wound up deciding orangeries were best left for Hampton Court. We got a 'proper' kitchen extension which cost an eye-watering amount for the basic single storey 3ft or whatever is within permitted development version, and that's worked out great but would be at least double your orangery costs now.

You know the houses in question and obviously something is drawing you more strongly to the three-bed, but the four-bed still sounds better from your posts. Sure the kitchen is still a galley, but it's bigger, it has a dining room (very useful for other purposes than dining, just having another bolthole/office/place for sleepovers/playroom etc) and an extra bedroom, and your youngest wouldn't be stuck in a boxroom. I can't see why the 3-bed with orangery has the edge just to get a 'theoretically useable' house cheaper, if you can afford the 4-bed. As long as it wouldn't dangerously over-stretch you, I'd spend the money and get the bigger house that won't need an orangery to make it useable at best. It's your home and imo it's worth the extra 30K if you have it.

We have just replaced our conservatory with an extension as it was nearing the end of its life 25 approx years and it’s so much better. Have you factored that orangeries will too need replacing?

Not sure I see the logic of thinking you cant afford a 400k house if you need to spend 100k on it (total 500k)

But then choosing a different house for 500k

Same price surely

But I see you're going for the original house. The advantages are that you get to choose the layout as you like it, if you are going to do the extension. You dont have to get the work done straight away and can take your time and save up money

The disadvantages of course are that work on a house is hard work, people let you down, costs go up, the house is covered in dust and dirt for months, its exhausting and lots of mental load.

Is an orangery the same as a conservatory? If so, it would be impossible to work effectively all year round in our conservatory. Too bright and too hard to heat / cool consistently. Don't get me wrong I am actually a big fan of conservatories, in fact I am in mine now as the current weather makes it gorgeous in here when it is too cold to be outside, but it has to be a space that isn't relied on all year round, you need other spaces. We also have a separate dining room and home office so the conservatory is a 'bonus' room and it definitely works best that way.

Research the orangery idea, sorry but if you are thinking adding space with a single storey orangery please consider an actual extension. It has come up on MN a lot along with conservatories and it rarely works, as others have said way too hot in summer and freezing in winter. Plus if it is open to which ever room you add it to that makes all the heat from that room get sucked into the orangery because of the sheer amount of glass. There is a reason we have window coverings in terms of curtains or blinds and why people put blinds inside large bi-folds too.

If you can post a floor plan. As we knew we wanted to do an extension when we moved here I read lots on SIP extensions vs traditional brick and block vs block and render, attended the Homebuilding and Renovation show when it toured etc.

Extensions can landlock rooms making them a through room and also make them very dark. If this is a house you are planning to stay in for a while consider that your children will be adult sized at probably 12/13. Where will they do their homework for secondary? Think about how you working from home will work with an area for children to also play near.

Does it still have pd rights? Many newer houses(even 1990s) had theirs removed when built as part of pp. There will be buildings regs required for an extension, especially if no internal doors to a glass conservatory/orangery.

Thank you all for your feedback. To give you a bit of context about our dilemma; we would like to take on less financial burden, if possible, and want to explore ways to do this as our work/life balance would be better. We could stretch ourselves to reach the 4-bed if really needed but we would prefer not to have as a great financial pressure if at all possible, but if the 3-bed really wouldn’t work for us long-term then we would do this. This is why we were trying to explore all options.

That’s really interesting about the orangeries. I have been reading about them online and a lot of sources say they are useable all year round. They also seemed to looked quite nice with glass lanterns etc so that’s why we were interested in them. This website seems to suggest an orangery would be better for open plan living and extensions if we wanted more rooms:
Anglian

We would need a dining area with a table so I’m not sure the dining room in the 4-bed can be used for anything else, and would the 2 sq meter extra in the bedroom for the youngest be worth the extra money? In the 4-bed I would be using the box room for my office, so I’m still not sure where all the kids toys / homework for teenagers would go there, that’s why I felt the single storey extension could open space for lots of options which we wouldn’t be able to afford on the 4-bed.

@HangerOverTreeFruit yes I have been thinking this. Where is there room for all these things. Your help on types of extensions would be greatly appreciated. This was the hup stuff: https://hup-home.co.uk/

@LIZS : I would have to explore the PD rights, but have read building regs would def be required for the open plan design we were thinking! There’s so much stuff to know isn’t there!

I really do appreciate everyone’s point of view who has replied. Really trying to make the right decision and it’s great to bounce ideas xx

An orangery aka a conservatory in North Yorkshire
Where? The weather varies considerably? What direction will it be facing? Are you ok that you may only get usage for 5 months a year?
How is it going to be heated? And how will you stop it getting too hot in summer?

Plus since the unitary council was created the planning system is pretty well ground to a halt. £400 just to get pre planning advice and you actually can't get any!

As @LIZS says, we had no permitted development rights so we had to submit plans to the planning department but it was free as it would have normally come under PD. My house was built in the late 90s.

Positive stories about Orangeries/conservatories are usually by the people who sell them. A previous house of ours had a conservatory (we are in West Yorkshire) it even had a radiator in it and it was still freezing in winter. We put foils in the roof which helped a bit but it always feels like an add on rather than something functional. It is due to the glass letting a lot of the heat out.

The Hub! looks good, as they mention, building regs for thermal insulation is the minimum and is totally shit, so always aim to go much higher. The SIP extension looks good, full foundation of brick and block then the insulated panels on top. I would recommend roof lights/lantern/velux but never a whole glass roof. The noise from rain on glass is loud.

Re the floor plan you can screen shot it on your phone and then edit the image in your photos and upload it here if you feel comfortable then we can see what you are looking at.

Re kids' toys and storage, they don't have to have access to all their toys all at once, you can cycle them. Storage wise think about anywhere you could potentially put floor to ceiling storage, any room, dining room even bedrooms or consider the loft or garage.

@HangerOverTreeFruit Thank you so much for this!!

Yes, great idea. I have uploaded a photo of the floorpans. Ultimately we are trying to work out if going for the 4-bed is worth considering given the extra space it has currently or if there is an option to make the 3-bed work with some sort of extension/orangery for less money. So we were hoping to achieve a dining space, WFH space, and toy space with these options. The 4-bed is currently lacking the toy space but does have the conservatory with a roof. Despite it having a roof, I'm not sure how useable this would be all year round. For the 3-bed we were thinking of knocking down the wall between the kitchen and dining area and adding a wall to cut off the living space (although appreciate the space may make it more like a snug). The extension/orangery in the 3-bed would hopefully have space for the kitchen, dining, play area, and WFH. It would be great to hear your advice on this and which would be the most 'cost-effective' based on space.

Thank you @JackSpaniels – definitely a lot to think about there. We ultimately need the room to be usable all year round so was thinking an orangery with floor to ceiling bricks and big windows, but with a roof and sky lantern. If this comes under orangery/extension I don't know now :). Heating would be radiators / floor heating but not sure which would be best yet.

I've no axe to grind, but the four-bed looks loads better from those floorplans. Toy space should not be a deciding factor. You've got four bedrooms, a sizable dining room, a big conservatory, plus bigger kitchen and presumably some capacity for a garden shed or storage out there. The three-bed doesn't compare - we had one just like that, which is why we did the 'proper' extension to get the living/dining space out back (and also closed off that open plan through room cos when the kids get a bit bigger you need a separate space from them), and we did a loft conversion too to get the fourth bedroom. Which all cost a lot more than the additional cost for the four-bed even 7-10 years ago. The only reason to go for the three-bed is if you can't afford the four-bed or don't like the latter, in which case I'd keep looking for another house that has more room than the three-bed. I like those three-beds well enough, but as you do want all the extra space and a two-storey extension is prohibitive, it doesn't seem to make sense for your family, with or without an organgery.