What Do You Get For $625,000? - Whole House Remodeling
I was working with a contractor a few years ago who was
remodeling homes and building room additions for clients who lived in a
wealthy neighborhood. Most of our clients were between the ages of 30
and 45 years old and living in million-dollar homes.
The homes were about 40 years old and most of them needed to be updated,
so why not put another room on or remodel the entire home. What the
heck, these people had hundreds of thousands of dollars in equity, just
sitting around. One of the homes that we worked on had a $400,000 budget
and we weren't even one third of the way through the job, before they
went over budget.
The original home was about 2500 square feet and by the time they were
done it was about 3500 square feet. But for $625,000, this newly
remodeled home had a state-of-the-art electronics and security system
with a home entertainment area. Every room in the house had everything
that you could possibly imagine cable TV, high-speed Internet access and
a telephone line.
The entire house had new plumbing, electrical and heating. It now
required two air conditioning condensers which needed to be okayed by
the neighborhood. The city building department wanted more information
on the air conditioning condensers, to make sure that they weren't going
to bother the neighbors. That was a first for me.
When this house was finally completed, it was amazing. It might not have
been a home that Bill Gates would have wanted to live in, but it was
nice. State-of-the-art kitchens and bathrooms, made the home more
enjoyable for the homeowners, who now had to make an extra house
payment.
$625,000 buys you a lot of home remodeling and you better not forget
that.