Is A Conservatory Value For Money?
Is the Value Added to Your Home Justifying the Price?
According to the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) adding a conservatory increases the value by as much as 5%, but market experts (including such as Real Estate Agents firm Savilles) estimate the true benefit can be up to 10% if you do the job well – with the UK average house price in 2015 standing at almost £195,000 this means a you could add up to a whopping £19, 500 to the value of your home – amazing.
It’s clear that an extra room is always appreciated by those looking to buy and it’s more likely that a good quality conservatory is significantly less cost to construct than a “traditional” brick built extension of the same floor space and therefore a solid investment.
Apart from the monetary benefit you get a bright & peaceful area to spend time in and enjoy. The extra space often improves lifestyle giving owners the opportunity to make use of the space as a living / dining area, study or workroom or space for the children to entertain themselves.
If you take your time to find a trustworthy company and can use some negotiation skills, the price of building a conservatory may not be as costly as you may at first think. Very often the construction can be simplified by keeping it with glass sides and not using low level brick “dwarf walls”
However, with so much glass, it will need to be properly double glazed with highly efficient sealed units in order to manage heat loss & gain in hot or cold weather.
There are some things that you should be thinking about when planning your conservatory, especially if the primary reason for building it is the significant value that it can add to your property.
- Your budget needs to be within or below the potential property value uplift
- The new room should not of proportion with the house
- Don’t “overbuild” for the location – local resale values in the area that you live can lift or depress the financial benefit from building a conservatory
- Keep the quality as high as the budget allows – it’s no good adding a “greenhouse” and expecting to reap the rewards.
- Be aware of extra costs such as potential planning requirements, having to move drains, power cables or water mains.
- Be considerate of your neighbors – if they don’t like what you are doing it can cause endless issues.
At the end of the day, if you plan & build it right, your new conservatory will add value to your house and give you more living space and in most cases the value added to your home will more than justify the conservatory price.