Home, Land, Property Buying and Selling - Remodel home or save money to buy new home???

My wife and I have been thinking, which in itself can get ourselves into trouble!!! :) Anyway.... We have a 3.5 bedroom house and 1.5 kids! Jan 10 will be 2 kids. Well eventually we will outgrow the house unless we add-on.
Our question is shoud we continue to put money into our current home( i mean big improvements that we wanna do, like new replacement windows, doors, siding, new furnace, and all new grass and landscaping, which it all needs!!) or should we just do the necessary improvements/fixes and just save money toward the new house, which would be custom built or a newer used home??
So far we have remodeled the bathroom(complete gut and all New except toilet), painted and fixed horse hair plaster walls, new flooring, sink, and countertop in kitchen, insulated attic floor and all ext.walls w/ blow in cellulose, all new electric wiring, and patched and dry-loc'd the basement walls. This all has happened in less than 2 yrs of owning it and I have yet to pay anyone to do this for me.
My goal was to put all new drywall in all the upstairs rooms, and carpet.
Anyone w/ any info or experience in this let me know. The housing market is great if your a first time buyer, but for selling your house it hasn't looked to good from all the tv shows I have seen.

Complicated issue. You have to look at a lot of different factors like how long do you plan to live in the house if you do stay, what are other houses in the neighborhood like, how much do you like living at that address,.... Only you can answer these questions, but it does help to do a little looking at what's for sale in the areas to which you would consider moving.

Since you "live" in this house it's more an emotional than financial issue. However, you can't just ignore the financial side either.

You sound like a very accomplished DIYer (or very good at getting friends and family to work for free!) to have done this much without paying. However, if you're going to increase the footprint of the house, or add and extra story you're probably going to have to pay someone for much of the work.

Also you'll be living with the work at the same time that you have a new baby in the house. If neither of you mind the second part, and YOU'RE NOT INCREASING THE COST OVER THE AVERAGE VALUE IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD, then I'd consider remodeling. Otherwise just move into a "newer" used house, they're cheap now and getting cheaper.

frank

Yeah, Frank with excellent advice again. I asked about the other houses in your neighborhood with the idea that if you make yours the nicest one, you'll never get anyone to pay you what it could be worth in another neighborhood. If you want to stay the rest of your life and enjoy this home, that might be an ok decision on your part. My parents looked at other homes with the potential to move once and never found what they wanted, so the added on to their home and priced themselves out of the neighborhood. That was more than twenty years ago and they've been happy with the house ever since.

It is a great time to buy a house, but you have to get someone to buy yours first, which is a bigger hurdle now than most have ever seen it before.

Yes what they said! My other question, not to be too personal, would be - are you going to have another kid? If so, another bedroom will likely be in order (unless the siblings don't mind sharing a bedroom until they go to college, the old fashioned way). If you are sticking with the 2 kid number, 3 1/2 bedrooms sounds plenty big to me. Then again we don't have kids, and all our friends have the little tiny variety that don't take up much room, so I am not well versed in this subject.

Also do you like your house now? Do you LOVE your house now? Any qualms about moving at all? If so I would stick with what you have. You don't want to make a change you might regret. Plus if you have spent alot of time and money upgrading your current house to YOUR house, remember it will take a long time to re-create YOUR house somewhere else.

I just realized I have a problem here - how do you get a half bedroom?

Thanks for all the advice. This is a hot topic for me. Usually I only get 1 post. About the .5 bedroom, well it was a 2nd story porch I think, then they put 6, YES 6 freaken windows(OLD weight/cord windows) and put down flooring. I used it as a computer room but now have a futon there for when my bro stays over every once and a while.
We may or may not have another kid! I will have 2 boys by mid Jan. If we do have another one we can always put the 2 boys together. But when they get to be 11 or so I would want to have them in thier own rooms. My bro and I were in seperate rooms.
We bought this house b/c it had HUGE potential. Don't mind sharing, we bought it for 109k and around 101k financed. The house next to me is up for sale. Same size maybe about 100sq ft bigger or so, and they have a 2 car garage but a smaller lot. We have a corner lot and one car attatched. Our central air unit took a shi* this March. They also have a brand new gas furnace just installed and they are selling it through a realtor for 135K!! So I figure our house is worth about that maybe 125 at the least.
We like our house! Kinda a LOVE/HATE relationship!! HA HA
We wanna do a lot more work but my neighbor said if we do the siding, windows, doors, furnace, new a/c unit and I wanted a 2.5 car garage he said I may not get the money I put into it BACK when I sell it.
This house was kinda rough around the edges when we bought it. Every room had cracks and bad paint. Ext. painter needs shot. He got paint all over the windows when he painted it about 5 yrs ago and the wood bevel type siding is getting rough too!!!
We also have no, and I MEAN NO landscaping. I had 2 big trees cut down in the spring, and only have one little one left in the front of the house which won't get much bigger b/c that will be coming out next yr. We plan on having the whole yard ripped up and replanted next spring!! YEAH NO MOWING FOR A WHILE!!! My uncle owns all the equipment to do that so I will get a nice deal on the new dirt and stuff.

I appreciate all the help!! I know it is our choice and what not but my wife was hounding me about just selling next yr. I am getting a nice job upgrade w/ a nice pay increase so that is what spawned all of this. SORRY IT'S SO LONG!!!
THANKS AGAIN!!
ps- I paid my family that helped w/ my diy's w/ a nice big CASE OF BEER!!!!!!!!!! HA HA

Personally I would not sell. Lets say you do have another kid... by the time you are looking at everyone having their own room you may only have two living at home anyway. Or your financial situation may change. Or the market may change radically. Or or or... I feel too many people get a new job and decide to get a bigger more expensive house and then something unexpected happens and suddenly they can't afford any of it. I respect your other half's desire to better you situation now that you have more income, but that does not necessarily mean moving into a bigger house. Better is relative - maybe take nicer vacations or get a nicer car - plus think of those college educations you need to save up for :eek:

Yeah you make a great point on the college!!! My parents helped me through college by giving me money every once and a while on top of my job I had. They never saved up for me but when I got a job the employer paid the rest off for me if I signed a contract.
We decided last night to just continue fixing up but do it w/o a 2nd mort. or other loans and just pay cash or do zero perc. special purchases. I appreciate all the posts and help.

Another question. How will I know how much I should spend on remodeling?? I don't wanna do to much then not get back what I put into the house!!

Well, right now is a great time to buy, and a bad time to sell, in most areas. Can you afford to buy, and rent out your house. If so, this is a great time to do it.

If you decide to remodel, if you're going to stay for 5 or more years (I pulled that number outta air), don't worry so much about the payback. Do what you will enjoy.

I never thought of that, renting out our current house and buying another!! Wow. We are going to stay for 4-8yrs now. We sat down and realy talked about it. I still wanna do windows and siding and doors but she don't! What should we do. You figure 20k to be safe for all of that. It would have to be a second mortgage thing. I don't usually have that much cash laying around, maybe 10k but not 20k!!! HAHAHAHAHA Thanks for the posts!!!
Chris

I never thought of that, renting out our current house and buying another!! Wow. We are going to stay for 4-8yrs now. We sat down and realy talked about it. I still wanna do windows and siding and doors but she don't! What should we do. You figure 20k to be safe for all of that. It would have to be a second mortgage thing. I don't usually have that much cash laying around, maybe 10k but not 20k!!! HAHAHAHAHA Thanks for the posts!!!
Chris
We bought are house 13 years ago. Planned on being there 4-5 years. :( Finally got some land we hope to build on soon. Gonna have to replace the back slider for sure. Has metal windows, so could use new ones to make it sell better. Etc. Should have done some of those a long time ago, so I could have enjoyed them and saved some of the energy. Oh well.