Q&A 3 – Renovating vs New Construction Which is best for me

Here we are back again with another great question, Alex, what is the difference between new construction and remodeling, and which one should I choose? They’re both great options. The option with new construction is it’s very prescriptive, we’re building from the ground up, we’re starting with the foundation, we’re going all the way through to the roof framing. That’s a huge advantage because everything is very constant. We can control all of these different techniques and all of these different trades, and we’re building specifically off a desired plan for you, and it’s custom.

There’s a huge advantage here for time savings. We’re able to prescriptively build, we’re able to send in our crews, and to make sure that each sequence is done in the correct order, and everything remains on time. Therefore, we’re translating that schedule to you and we can maintain a very specific and strict schedule for production, which keeps us on track. The other advantage is budget. There’s very little contingency in a new construction budget because all of it is constant. We can control our costs, we can offer a fixed price contract and that for you is very economical, and it gets the job done to the expectation and the cost and the budget that you expect.

Another great option to go is remodeling. A lot of our clients like to do remodels, and we definitely want to support them and can provide those services. Remodeling is a little bit different because we’re adapting to an existing structure. So, it can have its advantages and disadvantages as well. With an existing structure, we’re simply building onto it or we’re building up from it. So, that definitely changes the dynamic because we’re not necessarily aware of everything that’s in the existing structure. We do our best to find out what the structural components are. We work very diligently with our structural engineering and architecture teams to establish as much constant as possible, but the reality is, this is going to take a little bit longer.

So, while you’re thinking about remodeling, thinking about a realistic timeframe to do that in is definitely important. As well as budget, we want to increase the level of contingency in our budget with a remodel. There’s going to be some factors in here that we’re not aware that we don’t know about. So, it’s always, always good planning and makes perfect financial sense to think about having a contingency in remodeling. We definitely encourage it because if there’s a time or a segment during construction where we run into something that might be a little bit more challenging, we want to be fully prepared on the onset of that, to have the funds to be able to take care of it.

That being said, we want to be financially prepared with a little bit increased contingency. I want to set a good expectation and we want to be transparent about budget, so I definitely recommend that. I think it’s good practice in construction, and it leads to a better success rate at the end of the project. So, let’s set ourselves up for success, think about the level of contingency we have, and understand and be realistic about setting these expectations with a remodel and we’ll have a great project together.