How important is a budget when considering a home remodel? Owings Brothers asks client prospects what they estimate for their budget when they call our office to schedule an appointment with our remodeling consultants. The reason we ask their desired budget is to help guide the customer through the process. Many customer prospects that call have no idea of what it costs to remodel, but most all have an idea of how much they want to invest in their home. No one wants to invest in a home remodel and over value their home for the neighborhood. Customers who do their research review the selling prices for other homes in the neighborhood and decide whether they have the equity in the home to support the remodel and still keep them in a competitive range, should they decide to sell. Expert Joe Smith of Owings Home Services shares the impact of setting and keeping a budget when remodeling your kitchen and bath.
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Expert Joe Smith talks about how important bath and kitchen selections can be on the overall progress of a remodeling project. View Kitchen and Bath Selections Video.
Video Transcription
Why it is important to have a budget and maybe how to develop one – or set a realistic one.
Budgets
Does everyone know what a budget is? The reason I bring this up is, because a lot of the time it shows – people come up to talk to us at the show or at their house – either they don’t know a realistic budget, or they are trying to develop it, or they just don’t want to tell us. Now a lot of the time they don’t want to tell us because they are a little nervous that we might make the job fit their budget, or bid to the budget, which is exactly what we are trying to do actually. It’s just like buying a car. We don’t want to spend 3 hours doing an estimate come back to you, we’re at $50,000, you’re at $10,000. It does nobody any good. So the idea us asking you on the phone, trying to get it up front – we’re trying to work to get you something to accomplish what you can within your budget. And sometimes we’re actually saying, it’s actually better to wait a year, wait and get more money and doing it the right way instead of halfway doing it. There are certainly different way to accomplish those things. We will talk about those as we go along. And as I said here, people often resist that, but they feel like they are going to be taken advantage of. Most reputable contractors aren’t going to do that, what they are trying to do is get a sense of how to get you to where you want to be with your budget. And everyone has a budget. I haven’t run across anyone yet who said, hey I have an unlimited supply of funds, let’s just do it. I’m looking for them, so if you know them, you can point them my way.
Kitchen and Bathroom Remodeling
In this economy, kitchen and baths seem to be probably the number one – I think I looked at my numbers recently – we did more kitchens and baths than anything else. And some of them are partials, like just countertops, some appliances, freshen up or get ready to sell. A lot of what we hear is that people are underwater or close and want to let the market recover, so they want to enjoy their bathroom and then have a nice resellable bathroom in the future. And there is a little bit of pent up demand. I was recently with one that had duct tape and plastic in their shower and trying to still use the shower. They were putting it off – trying to wait for the market to recover. So you have sort of make your own judgment based on your budget, your goals. Some of the questions contractors will ask you are. What are your goals? How long are you planning to stay? That’s all helpful for us to help guide you where you are trying to go – whether it be a kitchen or bathroom – or any remodeling project.
