Introduction
We renovated our first home beautifully. New kitchen, living room, driveway, front yard. Then we moved anyway. Not because the renovation was wrong. Because we had been solving the wrong problem.
I have been a Markham realtor for 18 years. Before that I was a homeowner who learned this lesson the hard way. And almost every week I sit across from families who are about to make the same mistake.
This post is not going to tell you that renovation is wrong. It is going to help you figure out which problem you actually have, so you only pay to solve it once.
The difference between a house problem and a home problem
A house problem is physical. The kitchen is outdated. The bathrooms are small. The driveway is cracked. There is no garage. These are real problems and renovation genuinely solves them.
A home problem is about fit. Your neighbourhood is not right for your family. The schools are not where you want them to be. The commute is eating your mornings. Your kids are sharing rooms they have outgrown. The house is too small for the life you are actually living.
Here is the thing. Renovation cannot fix a home problem. You can put a stunning new kitchen in a house that is in the wrong neighbourhood and you will still be in the wrong neighbourhood. You can add a bathroom and still face a 45 minute commute to work. You can finish the basement and still be three schools away from the one your family actually needs.
Most families know this intellectually. But emotionally, when they are facing the stress and cost of moving, renovation feels safer. It feels like solving the problem without the upheaval. What it often is, is deferring the problem while adding a cost.
My own story
When my wife and I bought our first home we lived in it as it was for two years. Eventually we changed the vanity in the powder room. Small thing. Then a few years later we did a proper renovation. Kitchen, living room, driveway, front yard. It looked great. We were proud of it.
Then we moved.
Not because we did not like the house. We liked the house fine. We moved because we were in the wrong neighbourhood. The schools were not right for our son. My job was nowhere near where we lived. The renovation had made the house more beautiful but it had not made any of those things better.
We moved to Markham. And as soon as we settled in we made changes. Not huge ones. We updated the family room and the kitchen to better suit how we actually lived. Neither renovation was expensive but both of them made daily life meaningfully better. And we got to enjoy them. For years.
The people who bought our first house enjoyed a beautiful renovated kitchen that we had paid for. We gave them that benefit. In Markham, we kept the benefit for ourselves.
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That lesson shaped how I talk to clients about this decision.
The lesson from our first home was simple. We waited. We renovated. We moved. The next family got a beautiful kitchen they never paid for.
In Markham we did it differently. We renovated early and we kept the benefit for ourselves.
The renovation math nobody runs
When families tell me they are considering a major renovation, I ask them to run a number they usually have not considered. Not the renovation cost. The recovery rate.
A full kitchen renovation in a Markham home typically runs between $60,000 and $120,000 depending on scope and finishes. When you sell, you will likely recover somewhere between 60 and 75 cents on every dollar you spent. That means a $100,000 kitchen renovation adds roughly $60,000 to $75,000 to your sale price.
You spent $100,000. You recovered $65,000. The net cost of that renovation to you personally is $35,000, and that assumes you sell soon after completing it. If you stay for years and enjoy it, the math changes in your favour. If you renovate and then move two years later, you have paid $35,000 for the privilege of making someone else’s new home nicer.
Now think about what that $35,000 could have done instead. Applied toward your move-up, it closes part of the gap between your current home and the right one. It reduces your mortgage on the new home. It covers closing costs and moving expenses with room left over. Money spent on a renovation you then leave behind is money that stops working for you the moment you hand over the keys. Money applied to moving into the right home keeps working for you for as long as you own it.
The two situations where renovating is the right answer
I am not here to tell you renovation is always wrong. There are two situations where it is clearly the right call.
The first is when you genuinely plan to stay for ten or more years and you have a real house problem. The kitchen is genuinely dysfunctional. The basement is unfinished and your family needs that space. The renovation will improve your daily life for a decade and you will get full enjoyment out of every dollar you spend. In this situation, renovate without hesitation and do it as soon as you can after moving so you maximize the time you benefit from it.
The second is when you are renovating specifically to sell and you are disciplined about what you spend. In this case the renovation is a strategic investment in your sale price, not a lifestyle improvement. Focus on the highest return items. Kitchens and bathrooms done to a market-appropriate standard, fresh paint, curb appeal. Do not spend $120,000 on a kitchen in a neighbourhood where homes sell for $900,000.
Everything outside of those two situations is worth examining carefully before you pick up a hammer.
The three questions I ask every family
When a family tells me they are trying to decide between renovating and moving, I ask them three questions.
Question 1: If you renovate and the house looks exactly the way you want it to look, will you want to stay here for at least ten years?
If the answer is yes, renovate. If the answer is maybe or probably not, you likely have a home problem, not a house problem.
Question 2: What specifically is making you unhappy about where you live right now?
If the answers are about the physical condition of the house, that is a renovation conversation. If the answers are about the neighbourhood, the commute, the schools, the size, or the stage of life your family is in, that is a moving conversation.
Question 3: Have you actually run the numbers on what moving would cost you right now versus what the renovation would cost?
Most families have not. They have a rough sense that moving is expensive and renovation feels more manageable. When you actually sit down and look at the net cost to move up in today's market, the comparison often looks very different from what they expected.
The answers to those three questions tell me almost everything I need to know about which direction makes sense.
The lesson I take from 18 years of watching these decisions play out
The families who renovated a home they genuinely loved and planned to stay in, and who did it early rather than waiting, almost always look back on that decision well. They got the full benefit of the money they spent.
The families who renovated late, spent big, and then moved anyway within a few years almost always wish they had moved sooner. Not because the renovation was bad. Because the money went to the next family instead of staying with them.
And the families who were honest with themselves about having a home problem rather than a house problem, who moved instead of renovating, almost universally say it was the right call. The new home solves the real problem. The commute is shorter. The schools are right. The space fits the family. No amount of renovation at the old address would have delivered that.
The decision is different for every family. But the framework is always the same. Figure out whether you have a house problem or a home problem first. Then decide what to do about it.
If you are renovating to make your current home bearable, you might be solving the wrong problem. And if you are going to renovate, do it early so you are the one who gets to enjoy it. |
DM me the word RENO and let’s figure out which decision actually makes sense for your family right now.
