Extension/Reno Advice
I am considering putting a bid on a small single family frame house in South Park Slope/Greenwood Heights. Ideally, we’d like to add a new two-story extension to add a bedroom on the second floor and expand the living space and kitchen on the ground floor. There is enough available FAR to do so. Understanding that this would be an expensive and time consuming process which is entirely new to us, I’d appreciate the community’s advice on how to begin assessing cost, timing, etc. before we commit to going down this route. I’ve seen rough ballparks on the forums of $250-300/psf cost for such an endeavor — are these psf estimates reasonable? How long, realistically, I should budget for the process (I figure a year)? Finally, could you recommend architects and contractors we could speak with if we decide to move forward? Thanks very much.
kevinwalter
in Renovation 9 years and 6 months ago
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make-my-heights-the-p-heights | 9 years and 6 months ago
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slopefarm | 9 years and 6 months ago
If you haven;t even bid on the house yet, you are not in a position to get a real estimate from a GC. For your purposes, start with the best guess price range and add a 25% cushion, plus factor in costs of living elsewhere, etc.
sqhaexgkh | 9 years and 6 months ago
having gone through this recently, the price per square foot is partly contingent on the entire scope of work. For instance, our price per square foot went up when we scaled back the extension because it effected the “bulk” square footage discount. I would think you’re looking closer to 350-400 a sq foot (depending on finishes), at least. Would be suspect under 300\. My advice is get a good builder who knows the dob because the exentension (alt1) can be time consuming if you don’t have the right team. As for timing, we chose to file alt-2’s before the alt-1 so we could start work right away and so work could be done while waiting for the ultimate alt-1 approval. This was our contractors idea and seemed to work out favorably. That being said, we chose a builder who has their entire team in house and who generally work for developers. We did not have to wait for drawings or hire a separate architect. We closed in Mid-May and started work a week after closing (alt2). One piece of advice, get solid numbers and timelines as soon as you can. We were forced to scale back our extension because the price per square foot was more than we were given a loose quote on. In hindsight, I would have gotten firm prices and maybe was a little too trusting that the rough numbers would pan out. Though I couldn’t be happier with how things are turning out in the end.
carmenf | 9 years and 6 months ago
We are doing a very similar project in the same neighborhood. We are adding a 3-story extension (13 foot extension) and are gutting the interior of the house, adding new utilities, etc. I would budget $300 sqft as a conservative number with soft costs included (if we had gone with the absolute cheapest contractor we would have hit roughly this number.) If you?d like any level of quality or speed, budget for $350sqft. That does not include landscaping. In terms of timing- it took us 8 months to get our Alt1 permit approval, and we actually had some luck and took matters ?into our own hands? after about 7 months of reviews. We have a neighbor who is going on 18 months waiting for Alt1 permits, although his team is less pro-active than ours (he has had 5 reviews and is hoping to now start in the spring.) It is not uncommon for Alt1 permits to take 10+ months in the current environment, so don?t plan on starting anytime soon after you close. It will also take probably around 2 months for an engineer and architect to draw up your plans and get them ready to submission. Once the drawings are submitted and you begin the miserable process of review, you can begin lining up your special inspectors, getting your soil borings done, asbestos abatement completed, etc. I would recommend moving into the place while you wait for permit approvals- we did not do this because we expected a 3-4 month turnaround, and ended up moving in anyway after about 4 months when our lease was out. Once we got our permits, we moved into a sublet (so budget for that.) We are planning for around 8 months for construction and are on-target so far. TBD what mother nature will throw at us this winter, which might delay things. Our cheapest and second cheapest contractor bids had a 12-14 month estimate and the contractor we went with quoted 7-8 months. As the saying goes, you can have two out of the three: cheap, fast or good? You?re bidding essentially when we were bidding on our house- we closed in early November and started work about a month ago. I think it?s actually a good time of year as a lot of contracting firms have jobs finishing in late summer, so we were able to work with a contractor who usually wouldn?t have time for a job our size. Working in winter is risky, but so is hurricane season?so it?s a wash, I guess. If you?d like to chat further, shoot me an email at greenwoodframed at gmail