Why renovating in Vancouver may be your best option today
Key take aways
- Increase your property’s value
- Potentially more livable square footage vs what is allowed to be built under today’s single family dwelling rules (Vancouver)
- Let our government’s rebate programs help pay for some of the costs to increase your home’s efficiency (every dollar counts)
Time savings
Intro:
Of course, building a custom home from the ground up would result in the most tailored experience for a homeowner, but in today’s landscape of
- high interest rates
- expensive materials
- government policy
renovations in Vancouver are becoming more common as a way for homeowners to enjoy a modernized space for less money and less down time from inception to completion.
*Increase the property’s value
With the government’s push to densify single family building lots into multi-dwelling units throughout the Vancouver area, obtaining a single family home will become increasing more difficult and costly. Renovating the existing stock may be one of the best options for many to continue the dream of living in a single family home equipped with today’s modern features.
*More square footage
Depending on the existing home, there is a chance the current livable square footage exceeds what can currently be built under today’s single family dwelling rules. Previously, homes in Vancouver were allowed to be built at 70% of the lot’s total square footage, this rule has since been changed to allow only 60%.
With the reduction of buildable square footage, the desire to build a new single family home becomes less attractive.
Although Vancouver now allows less square footage for new single-family homes, homeowners can explore incentives, such as building to net-zero standards, to recapture space—though that’s a topic for another post!
*Government Incentives
One of the main goals of renovating is to update the home to today’s standards. That typically means at a minimum:
- Updated windows
- New roof
- Increased insulation R-Values
- Adding heat pumps (cooling and heating)
* to name a few
Government incentives make renovations even more attractive. By upgrading your home with features like new windows, a more efficient roof, or a heat pump system, you may qualify for rebates that can offset some of your costs
Time savings:
The majority of renovations require some re-framing and in most cases little to no foundation work. During the construction of a new home, these 2 stages typically account for 30-40% of the total build time.
By skipping the foundation and framing stages, renovations can be completed much faster than new builds. This means fewer months spent on temporary housing and lower interest payments on loans
Conclusion:
Renovating an older home helps set your most expensive asset up for future success. Today’s landscape of high interest rates, high material costs and government policy will cause the single family home’s value to increase over time, significantly more than an attached strata unit (duplex, condos, townhouses etc).
An updated space with today’s features (some possibly subsidized by the government) combined with more square footage than what can be constructed under the current Vancouver rules and the push towards more densification on single family lots is making renovations more popular than ever!
Not all homes are good candidates for renovating, but many are. If you are interested in evaluating your home or purchasing one in the near future, let’s connect (click here)! We would love to walk you though the process and help avoid some of the common mistakes.