Primary Home Gut Renovated Sales
If you own a property, you may be considering gut renovating before you sell. Owners tend to consider this when they have particularly well-located 2- and 3-family properties in Cambridge or Somerville.
Typically I get a call from a homeowner that goes something like this:
OWNER: Hey are you Cambridge Sage?
ME: Yes
OWNER: The house down the street was bought by a developer a year ago and they sold those condos for $1.5M a pop, can you help me do that?
ME: Potentially, but it’s a lot more expensive and stressful than it looks
OWNER: Make it happen!
OK, it doesn’t go quite like that, but it’s not that far off. A lot of owners see these wildly high prices and think it’s a piece of cake to get those prices. While that may have been the case a few years ago, today you really need to take full inventory of your situation.
A few good questions to ask yourself:
Do you have development experience or do you know someone who you trust who does? (If the answer is no here, I generally recommend you stop right here)
Do you have enough equity in your home and/or through your own finances to fund a project like this? In most scenarios for a full gut, you are looking at $500k and up to make a project like this happen.
Are you prepared for the mental anguish and stress that will come with a development project? Even seasoned developers will run into challenges left and right. Expect the work to take longer than you expect. And be more expensive than you expect. And be more difficult in virtually every aspect than you expect. You really need to be a particular kind of person who can stomach this sort of thing.
If you answered an enthusiastic YES to all 3 of these questions, then MAYBE a gut renovation is for you. You’ll still need to run the numbers and ensure you have plenty of cushion AND ensure that you will be in compliance with your local condo conversion rules and regulations.
If you’re thinking of going this route, let’s meet up and I can give you the low down for your particular situation!