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Advice from Craig

How to add value to your house

The short answer

Extra bedrooms add value, Craig says, but only if they are good sized rooms. Carving a house into tiny box rooms is rarely worth it, because a bedroom is only for sleeping. The real value is in living space. More people now move the kitchen to the back of the house as a big social room, turn the old front kitchen into the lounge, and build out three or four metres at the back, with roof windows or a lantern for light, sliding or bifold doors out to the patio, and the floors level through. For extras like air conditioning, Madisons brings in insured, credit checked specialists. Talk to us about a whole house renovation or a house extension.

Transcript

I see a lot of people say, what’s the best way to add value to my house? Money out, money in, or money out, money secured?

Ultimately, people say add bedrooms. Adding bedrooms will earn money. Now, earning the money, you will get X amount more for your home the more bedrooms it’s got. But don’t do that by sacrificing them all to be in tiny little box rooms. Unless you can put big bedrooms, nice bedrooms, on nice size, it’s probably not worth it, because ultimately you are going there just to sleep. We all go there just to sleep. Where you are going to spend the space is in your living space.

A lot of people live differently now to what they’re used to. So it used to be the lounge or the kitchen used to be on the front of the house, the lounge would be on the garden. People don’t want that anymore. We’re now taking kitchens, putting the lounge in the kitchen, the old kitchen, on the front of the house. And then we’re taking the kitchen and putting it on the back, making it a massive big social space, then building out onto the back as well. So you might have a three or four metre extension on the back of the house. Nice Velux windows across the back to let light in, or a lantern. Nice sliding doors or bifolds going out onto the patio, nice seating. [inaudible] the floors, level through.

The weather in the UK is changing, it is a bit warmer, the summers are actually really hot and they’re nice. You don’t need to go away as much anymore to experience nice weather. Just make the home that you’re in capable of working in that weather, rather than sitting in a box that’s a bit hot, sweaty. If you need air con, we can help you with that as well.

We’ve got some great companies that we’ve worked with, and relationships that we’ve developed over a long time, that we know are credible, we know they’re credit checked, we know they’ve got insurance, we know that they’ve got health and safety in place. It just takes a lot of that, the worry, out of that sort of situation for yourself. One stop shop. Give us a shout. We’ll help you with anything you need along the way.

Transcript lightly edited for reading: filler words and false starts removed. The captions on the film are word for word.

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