The question of cost is a big one when it comes to dealing with home renovations. If you own a house that needs renovations, should you spend the time and money making those renovations, or does it make more sense to sell the house as-is to someone else?
Frankly, the answer to the question of renovation cost is: It depends. And that’s the problem and the challenge. What determines the cost?
- Goal for the house
- Amount of work to be done
- Level of finish desired
- Cost of materials and labor in your location
- Length of time required
- And more
Some houses only require a small amount of renovation work. Others need extensive repairs. The needs and goals of the owner play a major role in the amount you’ll need to spend. If you are renovating a house just to make it livable without any fancy frills, you may be able to get away with a few thousand dollars worth of renovation. But if you have grand plans for expanded rooms and all-new cabinets and flooring and plumbing and lighting and tile and appliances, etc., you can literally spend a small fortune on a house remodel.
We recently bought a house that was damaged by a tornado. It wasn’t extensive damage like this other tornado house we bought, but it did need some damage fixed, plus it needed some cosmetic repairs to bring the house up to snuff.
This was a house we purchased to renovate and flip to a new owner. The house is in a simple, middle-class neighborhood, and was previously a rental home. Our goal was not turn turn this into a palace. Instead, we wanted to fix the tornado damage, clean up some design flaws with the house, and make it look desirable to the next owner.
So, while we can’t give you precise numbers on what your house reno will cost, we can share with you the things we did to this particular house. Perhaps it will give you a better understanding of the costs you are facing. With the lasting effects of Covid driving materials and labor costs up and making them difficult to get, you can expect most everything you do to a house will be more expensive that it was just a year ago.
What we do for our clients is buy houses that they no longer want. This may be because they inherited a house and they don’t need it. Or perhaps they have a house that, like this one, was damaged in a storm. Or it may be because your house has just gotten older, and it needs lots of repairs that you don’t want to tackle yourself. We buy those types of houses, in any condition. We are happy to take on difficult challenges so that you don’t have to.
If you have a house that you are considering renovating or selling, allow Resideum to make you a free, no-obligation, all-cash offer. Just complete this form and we’ll get back to you within 24 hours to get more details so we can quickly make you an offer.
Video Transcript
Greg Kurzner
Hey, guys. If you’re ever thinking about maybe renovating or remodeling your house or whether it might make more sense just to sell the house as-is and avoid all the hassle, we’re going to show you how to do that.
Brent Bagley
I’m Brent Bagley.
Greg
And I’m Greg Kurzner. And we’re with Resideum.
Brent
And this house behind us, we’re going to walk you through, it’s mainly a cosmetic flip we’re going to be doing and we’ll show you exactly what we’re going to do. And at the end, how much this job is going to cost us.
Greg
And when you find out how much it costs, then you’ll have that information to know whether or not, hey, I should do this myself or I don’t want to mess with this. So come on, let’s go take a look and we’ll quiz you at the end.
Brent
Yeah.
Brent
Hey, guys, we’re in the kitchen. Not much we’re going to do in here. We’re going to leave the cabinets the way we’ve got them.
Greg
Yeah, they’re nice.
Brent
Yeah. I mean, they’re not terrible. They’re actually nice wood.
Greg
Solid wood cabinets. Yeah.
Brent
So the big thing in the kitchen is going to be to remove this bar right here to my left, take it all out. And the fridge, why it’s placed here, I have no idea. But we’re going to move the fridge over to this wall and just open up the kitchen a little more because this space, this really isn’t needed.
Greg
It’s a waste. And this thing’s like a lost sailor out there.
Brent
Yeah.
Greg
Now appliances. We’re keeping the appliances, right?
Brent
Yes. Well, the power is off right now, so we don’t know, as you can tell, with the lights, why we have the lights right in here, there is no power to the house because it was hit by a tornado and we are having to get a permit to get the electric back on.
Greg
Now, while you’re keeping score, let’s revisit. We are taking this out, moving the fridge, but we’re keeping the cabinets and we’re keeping the appliances. What about the countertops?
Brent
As far as I know, we probably are going to keep the countertops the way they are. They kind of tie in with the cabinets. We may replace those, but we haven’t made a definite decision yet on that.
Greg
It can be hard for them to figure out the final rehab without knowing whether we’re doing countertops.
Brent
I know.
Greg
But that’s fine. Let’s assume we’re keeping them. So the kitchen is going to be basically the way it is except for the demo.
Brent
Yes.
Greg
And we’re doing flooring.
Brent
Yes.
Greg
Right? Throughout the house, we’re going to do flooring, luxury vinyl tile flooring?
Brent
Yes.
Greg
Throughout the house. So, one of the other major things that we’ve got to address is this crazy toilet in the laundry room. This house is a master on the main, but other than the master on the main bathroom, there is no toilet other than like a random toilet in the laundry room. So you got to see this, and then we’ll show you what our solution is for it.
Greg
All right. We’re here in the laundry room, and it is a laundry room doubling as a powder room. So I don’t know, but if you’re watching TV, you got to get up and go to the bathroom during a commercial. This is where it’s all going to happen. This is really not working for me. So we’re going to come up with a better solution, a better powder room solution, and also just on the cosmetics, you can kind of pivot and see that they had a dog and it must have been a big one. And he was chewing a lot of stuff, including doors. So when you’re keeping score, we’re replacing all of the doors in the house as well. Do you want to show the garage, Brent?
Brent
Yeah. All right. Now we’re in the garage. Mainly the big thing in here is going to be to paint the floors. We’re replacing the garage doors, the walls and the ceiling. So just some minor cosmetics out here. Good thing is we don’t have to change the water heater, hopefully. There is a tankless water heater already here, and it’s actually a good model, so this should work and we won’t have to worry about replacing that.
Greg
What about the room up there? Are we doing anything on that?
Brent
No. So we have no plans to really do anything to the bonus room above the garage. It’s studded, but…
Greg
We don’t even know if it would bear weight right?
Brent
No.
Greg
So in here, it’s just cosmetics. We got to fix the hole and the stains and paint.
Brent
Yep.
Greg
And you said garage doors. So as you’re keeping score at home, painting, fixing the drywall, and replacing a couple of aluminum garage doors. Right?
Brent
That’s it.
Greg
Okay. Let’s go check out the master. That one needs a little work.
Greg
So before we get to the master, I wanted to kind of pause here and also mention to you we talked about replacing flooring before. One of the things that you can’t really appreciate about the house on video without the ability to smell is the floors and the pet stains that are emanating from it. So in addition to just doing replacement of the floors, we may have to do some kind of chemical treat to make it smell all flowery again, right?
Brent
Yeah.
Greg
And then we talked about the powder room problem. So how are we going to solve that problem, Brent?
Brent
So that problem is going to be solved right over here. When you first walk in the house, there’s this big closet. We’re actually going to be converting this closet into a half bath or a powder room, whatever you want to call it.
Greg
Perfect, right? It’s about the same size and it’s going to work out. So we’ll have what, the vanity on one side?
Brent
Yes. And the toilet.
Greg
The toilet on the other side?
Brent
And the plan is to have the vanity there and the toilet over here to the right.
Greg
Great. And that’s going to really come in handy to have that powder room on the main that’s definitely missing.
Brent
Yes.
Greg
We’ll do the stairs last. Let’s go over the master. Talk about that, right?
Brent
Yes.
Greg
Before we do, though, we have a little, I would say, non-cosmetic work. It’s some structural work. The tornado did sort of do a little damage to the chimney chase, and you can kind of see that some of the moisture and water from that is evidenced here. So when we get outside, you’ll be able to see what work we have to do on it. Not a ton, but cosmetically, we’ve got some drywall.
Brent
Yep.
Greg
We’re doing painting. Some of the windows along the front of the house we’re going to be doing
Brent
We are going to be changing out the fireplace, though.
Greg
Okay.
Brent
These doors are going to go and we are going to fix this.
Greg
Okay. So you put that in the ledger as far as repairs are concerned. So we’ve got flooring, we’ve got paint, we’ve got repairs to the chimney. We’ve got windows along the front. And this is the master. Again, it is in need of a lot of work. One of the things that you can kind of see if you stick your head in here is that the master bath is pretty nice from a tile point of view and that high rail, but it just needs to be cleaned up and we’re going to take care of that. That’s a little troubling.
Brent
All right. So now we’re upstairs. We’re going to come into the first bedroom here. As you’ll see, again, not much to do. Carpet. We don’t have the stains up here like we do downstairs, which is good. Light fixtures. Of course, changing out the doors, painting trim, newish window. So we don’t have to replace the window up here.
Greg
That’s good. Yeah. So not much here. Just basic cosmetics, paint, carpet. Right?
Brent
Yes.
Greg
Doors.
Greg
And then we’ve got a little bit of work to do in this upstairs bathroom, right?
Brent
Yes.
Greg
Are we keeping the cabinets or are we replacing the cabinets? Do you know?
Brent
It looks like, I think we’re probably going to keep the cabinets since they match the ones in the kitchen downstairs. But we’re probably going to replace that countertop and of course, redo the flooring. Probably going to have to redo that shower door. New toilet.
Greg
New flooring.
Brent
New fixtures. New plumbing fixtures.
Greg
New light fixtures. Right?
Brent
Yes. New light fixtures, again, throughout.
Greg
Put that on the list too: Light fixtures.
Brent
All right. So this is the last bedroom that we’ve got. This house is a 3/2. I don’t know if we’ve said that before. Master on the main two upstairs.
Greg
And the bedrooms are equally sized essentially.
Brent
Yes.
Greg
So in here again, it’s going to be carpet, it’s going to be paint light fixtures. I think we mentioned out there.
Brent
Yes.
Greg
If the windows are new or newer, we’re keeping them. There’s only a few on the front that are the original single pane that we’ll replace. So if you’re keeping score again, just cosmetics up here, paint, carpet, primarily and just a little drywall work.
Brent
Right.
Greg
But we have a lot outside to go look at. So we want to make sure you keep that on the ledger as well as you’re adding up our costs. So let’s go outside.
Brent
Let’s go out.
Greg
Shall we?
Brent
Yep.
Brent
All right. So now we are outside. We’re on the back deck. Now out here. We’re going to have to replace a good bit of wood. There’s some wood rot on the floor, especially on that lower level to the left down there. Hopefully, we can keep the railing if there’s not any rot in it. So we shouldn’t have to replace everything out here. And then we’ve got siding, you’ll see, that was blown off by wind damage from the tornado. We’ve got gutters. Good news is a brand new roof, so we don’t have to replace that. And if you’ll pivot around to the you can see the chimney is a good bit of damage there, which we talked about when we were inside. We’ve got to fix that. Anything I’m missing, Greg?
Greg
No, I think you got it covered again. One thing we’ll say with regard to the vinyl siding is that we aren’t going to do something different with it. We’re going to replace what’s missing and keep what’s there and then paint it. So we have a process to paint vinyl so that if, for example, when we replace the missing vinyl with new vinyl and it doesn’t potentially match, which is highly likely, we have the ability to paint all of the vinyl so that it will all blend in well. And so that will be an interesting process and certainly saves us a lot of money as it compares to doing Hardie plank or replacing it with new vinyl all the way around.
Brent
Yes, that’s true.
Greg
Other than that, really, I think we’re going to have a little bit of money in landscape just to kind of clean it up before we put it back on the market to sell. But otherwise, you’ve seen everything we’re planning on doing. And in a moment, we’re going to give you the list of things we’re going to do in the house so you can add them up in your head, and then we’re going to tell you what it’s actually going to cost us to do so that you can decide if this was your house, whether you would fix it or you’d sell it as is.
Greg
Okay. So, Brent, we’ve given them all the list of items that we’re going to do. We’ve shown them. So how much is it going to cost to do?
Brent
This job we’ve currently got budgeted at $65,000.
Greg
$65,000?
Brent
Yes.
Greg
All right. So we are in our office now, and the project has wrapped up, and we wanted to get back to you and sort of report on what our final numbers look like. Remember that our budget was $65,000 and we ended up a little above that, right?
Brent
Yeah.
Greg
So to refresh your memory on the $65,000 budget. A lot of it was interior and exterior painting, siding, drywall, electrical, flooring and HVAC. We had to do a little bit of deck repair and we had some plumbing when we were adding the bath. Right? So, Brent, what happened and where do we go over budget?
Brent
A few of the big items that we had to do that actually made our budget increase was the deck. We had to actually replace it instead of repair it. The county came out and said that it wasn’t to code so that wasn’t expected. The chimney was more damaged by the tornado than we originally thought. So it was actually coming away from the house. That was around $7,300. We didn’t budget enough for landscape. We had to do a little additional there and then once we had it under contract the buyer actually requested us to do some repairs. It was around $4,800. So those are the big things that actually made our budget increase.
Greg
I got you. So overall our budget was originally $65,000 and where did it end up?
Brent
84
Greg
At $84,000. Okay, so that’s significant. That’s almost $20,000 more than we had budgeted for it. And honestly, those were things that we really couldn’t allocate for. These are things that are going to happen a lot. So one of the things I would say is if you’re a homeowner, you’re thinking about fixing up your house. It’s the devil that you don’t know that hurts you sometimes. So if this seems like a lot of risk and the stress of borrowing a certain amount of money, then having to go get more money or get it from friends or family or you don’t have it, maybe you’d consider selling the house as-is and Resideum would be a great opportunity. We would love to buy it from you and take the house as-is and that way you get your cash and you’re out without having to worry about all of this blowing your budget. So again, if you’re thinking about selling your house or doing this and it seems scary, call Resideum. Just click on the link below and we’ll get you an offer all cash within 24 hours.
Greg
I’m Greg.
Brent
I’m Brent.
Greg
And we’re with Resideum.
Complete this form to request your free, no-obligation, all-cash offer on your house.