Recently, you’ve found yourself wanting to increase the living space in your home. Investing in a sunroom addition will provide you with a beautiful space for activities, allowing you to bask in a flood of natural light while you work out, host a dinner party, or relax with a good book. However, before making the leap and finding a sunroom contractor, you may find yourself asking whether this home addition would add value to your home.
A quick internet search will reveal that there’s no easy formula that reveals how a sunroom addition will affect home value. However, as you plan your project, you can keep a few basic principles in mind. Consider the:
When determining whether a sunroom will add value to your home, most people’s minds immediately go to the increased square footage these additions offer. However, before you get out your calculator and start crunching numbers to determine the financial value of a sunroom addition per square foot, it would be worthwhile to first determine whether your room will count as “livable space.”
Livable space is a term used by appraisers, realtors and home builders to describe the finished living areas of a home. And while you may use your sunroom as a spot for hosting dinner parties, working out, or cozying up with a good book, the person putting your home on the market may not see things quite the same way.
Typically, three- or four-season sunrooms need to be heated and cooled by your central HVAC system in order to count towards your home’s total square footage. Plus, your addition should be integrated smoothly into the rest of your home, with level flooring and a roofline that complements the rest of your architecture. Building a space that meets these criteria often requires finding a skilled and trustworthy sunroom contractor, so make sure to do your homework before committing to a project.
Even if your sunroom addition won’t count towards your home’s square footage, you may still have a reason to factor it into your determination of home value. After all, a sunroom counts as an amenity, much like a pool or a deck. Not only do amenities entice potential home buyers to visit your property, but they can also incite them to pay more for it. In fact, homeowners who invest in well-made three- or four-season sunrooms oftentimes recoup a large portion of project costs when selling their house.
In order to ensure your sunroom addition provides you with the greatest possible value, it’s important to partner with a contractor you can trust. Look for someone who has plenty of experience and stands behind their work with robust warranties. More than that, though, you want to look at examples of the sunrooms that they’ve constructed. See whether they seem like an organic part of a home or a tasteless add-on. You should also consider whether the sunrooms they build will maintain their appearance for years to come. After all, the value of a sunroom is evaluated based on what it looks like when your home is listed, not how it looked when it was installed. In the end, partnering with the right sunroom contractor can make all the difference when it comes to determining the value of your new addition.
Would you like to learn more about having a sunroom addition installed at your St. Louis-area home? Jacob Sunrooms, Exteriors & Baths is the contractor to partner with! Contact us today to learn more.
