Doing living space conversion, garage remodeling impacts our change career plans

Living Space Conversion, Garage Remodeling Strategy

Our Realtor said "For adding living space, a conversion of the garage will make you more money than all your other change career efforts."

Other building professionals agreed that converting the garage to living space was a project that could be worth several hundred thousand dollars to us. Of course that was before the real estate bubble burst in San Diego.

How so? As new homeowners, we already needed more living space. Both our Realtor and a owner-builder services consultant advised us to add living space through the conversion of our garage. At the time, it seemed be a sure real estate money maker.

We were told that of all of our career change efforts to improve our financial picture, what would earn us the most money for the year was a garage conversion!

A Garage Conversion Will Fill The Need For More Living Space

Deciding to stay in San Diego in our career change journey, we finally bought a house, even though a modest 3 bedroom house in San Diego cost over $500,000 at the time we purchased the home!

Even as new homeowners, we needed more living space so conversion of the garage appeared to be the fastest and easiest way to add square footage to our new home.

For our garage conversion project we looked to owner-builder services, which is a do it yourself garage conversion approach.

Our Introduction to Owner-Builder Services -- UBuildIt

As we met with a consultant with a company that identifies itself as UBuildIt, "The Dominant Leader in Owner-Builder Services". Their claim is that they are the first and only franchise company to offer a national service to the owner-builder segment.

Needing living space, a garage conversion was exactly what we were looking to do, so UBuildIt owner-builder services seemed to be good fit for a do it yourself garage conversion.

Justifying Our Garage Conversion Plans

Both my wife and I have made change career decisions in the past few years, leading us to San Diego. After renting in San Diego, we decided to buy a house, even with prices over $500,000 for an entry level house. That same house sold for $200,000 when we first came to San Diego.

We heard comments like "Why are you remodeling your garage? You just moved!" Even though we had been in our house for a brief time, we felt we were already in need for more living space.

Our son, who suffered a spinal cord injury a few years ago lives with us. Our daughter was also moving to San Diego after making her own change career decision.

Sandwich Generation Membership Pending

The Sandwich Generation title is bestowed upon a generation who has two other generations living with them. We could be members of the Sandwich Generation very quickly if my wife's parents ever needed to move in with one of their children.

Our new house was just a bit over 1000 square feet of livable space. Our garage remodel plan was to either do a garage to bedroom conversion or a garage to family room conversion.

Adding Living Space Through Conversion Of The Garage Adds Value To Our Home Too!

Because it was an attached garage, new remodeling through our garage conversion plan would add much needed room, by simply adding living space through conversion of the garage.

We figured converting the garage was the easiest and fastest way to not only gain much needed living space, but to gain equity as well! Such a plan for converting space works when equity is increasing, but may not when housing prices are in a free fall.

In a real estate market like San Diego's, so we were told, the garage conversion cost would be minimal, compared to the added $300,000 of equity to our home's value when the garage conversion project was completed.

Perhaps that is why first our real estate agent, and then the UBuildIt owner-builder services consultant, both asked us "Do you have any idea the value your home will gain by adding living space through conversion of your garage?" We look back at such projections and see how fleeting they were now that the bubble has burst.

So it was that the real estate experts painted a bright financial picture if we would take the course of a garage conversion.

At the time we thought that maybe San Diego wasn't such a bad place to buy a house after all. Of course, we needed to refinance in order to cash in the increased equity. You see, we had another project that was supposedly a surefire equity increaser after adding living space through garage conversion.

There was an additional 700 square feet of living space to gain by adding a daylight basement.

In other words, our strategy was to gain an additional 1100 square feet of living space through a basement addition, whereby our 1070 square feet of living space would increase our living space to over 2200 square feet.

Simply remodeling space that already existed within the walls of our house, seemed to be such a wise way to increase equity. What plans we had in taking what seemed to be profitable refinancing steps.

But the San Diego bubble burst and we never did take action to do a garage conversion, even thought UBuildIt owner-builder services.

In a exploding real estate market, it may be true that for adding living space, a conversion of the garage will make more money than all our other change career efforts. But when prices begin falling by 20% or perhaps even 30%, the value of the home will not support even the best refinancing plans.