You should be able to find some information in your locale regarding teardowns vs. remodels. I know in the suburbs outside my city in many of them it is cheaper to tear down than to add on.

However I feel I have read somewhere that getting permits and getting plans approved for a new build is so difficult in parts of CA that builders will leave a minimal number of walls in place Just so they can call it a remodel and not a new house. I don't live there and what I have read may be an exaggeration, but I think if the builder Did think it was easier to tear down and start over that is what they would suggest.

From your photo it looks like you are over-improving relative to your neighborhood.

You will never recoup your costs when you try to sell.

Even in the crazy SoCal market where one house can be very different from the next, your house will sell for closer to the neighborhood than what you are paying for everything.

Why don't you just move and try to find a larger house that suits your needs?

Are there not large houses in your area?

How old are your children?

Is it possible for your same sex children to share a room?

They won't be living with you forever you know. And then what will you do with 5-6 bedrooms?

What is it about the location of your house that is keeping you in it?

Even if your children walk to school, there must be a larger house in that neighborhood!

This is a sellers market now, if there aren't that many houses on the market now, can you wait a year or two?

Also remodeling costs now are probably higher too, with materials hard to get.

What part of SoCal are you in?

My concern is that the house looks out of place in the neighborhood. Actually, I would think maybe you would have a lot of unhappy neighbors too, to have that towering house in an area that is all single story houses. I would be more than unhappy, if someone next to me, put in a house like that next to me. The house you are wanting, is beautiful, but, not so much for that particular area.

cat_ky I live near Boston so don't know west coast RE but I agree with above comments above the remodel fitting the neighborhood. I live in a neighborhood of 1 1/2 story capes and ranches when a young family across the street wanted to make their ranch a 2 story colonial, I voiced my opposition. It would have been so out of place on our street. Too large for the lot & too tall. Really think if you need 6 bedrooms, etc

I would recommend engaging another design-build firm for a second opinion. I’ve lived in both Nor and SoCal and familiar with local RE market. I think you may be able to get the remodel you want and avoid the $1.1M cost. I would shop around. When we finished our basement family room and added a full second kitchen we got 4 quotes ranging from 50K to 150K (not in CA) - we were able to add about 800 sf to the house and a ton of equity without breaking the bank by getting multiple estimates.

We live just outside DC, another high cost area, and did a similar albeit MUCH smaller project last year. Your costs seem high but they don't completely shock me. We spent about about $400k to add 500sf to add a primary suite above an existing back addition and remodel the existing space. We'd already redone the tiny kitchen so barely touched that, but added the bed/bath, gutted two baths, got all new floors, windows, doors, Hardie, portico, and fireplace plus reconfigured some walls. We later tacked on $60k for a screen porch, plus none of this really factors in architect and structural engineer fees as well as moving in and out and a rental house. Fwiw we had 3 other bids that came in $75-150k higher.

A teardown would have cost at least double, probably more. but I still sometimes wonder if we should have gone for it. In your case, I'd suggest really going to ground on that point - what's the differential for a new build? It might not take much longer and the end result might be significantly better.

I recognize the sensitivities around fitting into the neighborhood, but if you're in an area with high real estate costs, you won't be the first or the last to expand significantly. On one side of us is a 1200sf house that recently got an unpermitted dormer; on the other side a builder took out a 1000sf house and replaced it with a 7000sf McMansion. In my area, if you don't need a zoning exemption, the neighbors don't really have a say. But if you care about your neighbors, aim for something tasteful that doesn't block their views and do everything in your power to minimize the impact from the construction.

In my area of southern California, this kind of rebuilding would take over a year following several months of negotiation with the city's design review board and objections from the neighbors. You will have to move out during construction. Your neighbors will be really, really unhappy with construction trucks and workers' pickups for a year on the cul de sac.

Have you considered approaching the owners of the larger houses to see if any of them are considering selling?

I see this idea as fraught with the problems listed above including cost, inconvenience, time, permits, etc. A relative rebuilt after the Thomas fire and it took over two years. Permitting was awful, drawn out, expensive. Also consider your new tax situation. The fire victims got a break of some help, but you won’t. Of course - taxes would be higher if you bought a more expensive home, but at least you won’t have all the headaches of this renovation.

@loobab thanks, your points are well-taken. I understand that we won't recoup costs. This is spending, plain and simple. There aren't many large houses in our neighborhood, all the larger ones are custom jobs or new builds, but there are only a few. The result would certainly be one of the nicer and larger houses in the neighborhood, but there are a few others in that range. The kids are 8, 6, 3, and 3 (youngest 3 are boys) so it feels like whatever we're going to do we should do it soon to minimize disruption for them. Kids could share a room - yes (they currently do), but we are trying to plan for a house full of teenagers. And then, to your point about kids moving out someday, we like to imagine the possibility of grown-up kids coming-home to visit with their girlfriends/boyfriends/kids someday. How could we imagine hosting kids + families for Christmas in a 1600 sqft house? Obviously thinking too far ahead, but that's what we think about. Also - we can more-or-less afford this so we don't need to stay in the small house. But still agonizing over whether it's reasonable value or not.

The house is on a quiet cul de sac with several other families that we're close with. On weekends and evenings in the summer, all the kids just spill-out the front door and play in the street. We have regular impromptu street parties and for holidays and birthdays. It's a nice community. Wife heads the school parent association, etc. Sure, it's perfectly likely that we could find a similar sense of community somewhere else, likely after a few years. But what if we move to a better house and never really like the new neighbors? Of course our current neighbors could change in a few years, too....

We're in a nice middle-class suburb of San Diego. Good schools, good weather, decent commutes, etc. Could we wait a year or two? Probably, yes. The recent run-up in housing (and remodeling) prices makes me nervous, though. Houses that were selling for <$1M 2 years ago are selling for $1.5M now. Do you really think costs are likely to come down substantially? Seems like a tough gamble to make

Well, I am not a fancy economist, nor do I have a crystal ball.

But this COVID crisis has to come to an end in a couple of years.

Not that the virus will be gone, but the acute crisis will go, and people will go back to work and the supply problems will ease.

Just as the cost of homes now are jacked up, so are the costs of supplies.

This is a very expensive time to remodel.

You might want to wait 2 years.

You can still look around at houses in your area and see if there is someone selling who is desperate and you can scoop up a great house at a great buy.

It sounds like you and your family are sympathique and would find camaraderie wherever you live, and it is not difficult to check if a house has neighbors with children.

As others have said, I would hit the pause button and rethink. $1.1M for 1300 sf is a lot, even for SoCal in this market. Have you considered not building so much additional square footage? You didn't post plans so it's impossible to say, but perhaps you can get by with a smaller and simpler second floor addition which wouldn't overpower the neighborhood, save you money, and still meet your needs at least for the foreseeable future.

@RappArchitecture Thanks -- we explored "cheaper" options with the current firm and they weren't too appealing. They basically included ~half of what we wanted, and cost 80% as much. Spending $850k for a compromise with more quirks and parts of the house that we were still unhappy with didn't seem appealing. The current plan is something like $800/sqft and the smaller plans were even more expensive (in terms of sqft).

Perhaps the best approach is to get estimates from other firms, but we can't take our current plans with us and we already paid $7k to get this far. How would you recommend proceeding? Speak with other design-build firms, or hire an architect directly? I'll post rough plans in a bit

It's always wise to get more than one price, either with architect-designed plans or another design-build firm. Three is best, if possible. $7K sounds like a lot but it's a tiny drop compared with what you're planning to spend. Given your plans to stay there for a long time, you want/need to get it right. Get other options and costs.

We just did that, also with 4 kids. We planned and designed it for years, and finally pulled the trigger 3 years ago and did it in stages...while we lived here...covid home schooling and all. It won't be easy, nor fast. I kept reminding everyone that this is NOW , not forever. My husband is a GC, so we had his trusted architect and subs involved. Looking back...wow, quite the deal!! Good luck!!

@lucky998877 I should've married a GC....

Someone recommended looking for a desperate homeowner trying to sell a great house for a great price - this is an impossibility in this market. The more likely scenario is finding an average house completely overpriced with multiple offers over asking price.. this is the unfortunate reality, especially in CA. The cost of renovation is significant, but unless they buy a new build, anything else would probably require renovations too. We just purchased a house this summer over asking sight unseen with zero pictures before it even went on the market (not in CA) from someone who thought they were Chip (from HGTV) - they weren’t and we are still fixing their so called “improvements”. I guess what I’m trying to say is - it’s not a guarantee that they would be able to find a bigger house for less than the cost of reno that meets their needs and design esthetic, but I would still get more estimates, 7k is a lot, but they could save 100k+ which is significant amount of money.

@Gabe you're wise to pursue other bids even though you've already sunk some money into the firm you're working with. As you noted, you won't be able to use that design to get other bids, and at least in my experience it's hard to get even vaguely accurate estimates without detailed construction drawings. We tried when our architect first finished the preliminary design; a few firms were willing to offer a very general (and ultimately very inaccurate) sense of the likely cost, but others just said it wasn't worth their time especially now with the real estate and construction boom. So we had to spend at least $15k in architect/engineering fees before we could go out for serious bids.

Fwiw, we talked to and liked several design-build firms and in the end they probably wouldn't have been that much more expensive (and would have provided much better hand-holding during the process.) But working directly with an architect gave us greater flexibility and a bit more accountability with the contractor. The whole process took us a long time, in part because of my own indecision. Now is probably even harder since so many pros are so busy. Still it's well worth the investment of time and money, esp since it sounds like your neighborhood is a great one!

I guess mt first question is do you have to borrow to do this ? If so your bank will decide if this is feasible so talk to them before moving ahead. Yes you will need to find rental somehwere this is not going to be done while living in the space . Has an engineer actually checked to see if a second storey is even feasible. Why did you go this far without asking all these questions first. BTW we lived in 1600 sq ft for a long time with 3 kids and hosted hundreds of parties and family dinners . People do it all the time. As for the kids comong home there are hotels . I can think of many things to spend 1.1 m. on for sure. IMO this is an over build for the area and not going to apprecaite as much as you might hope.. This is ahuge undertaking and you need to talk to the bank unless of course you have this in your savings account.

Gabe, it sounds like your love for your cul-de-sac and current neighbors is maybe playing too big a role in your thinking. People do move away. We had a wonderful street with wonderful neighbors and a plan to stay forever. And then in a short period two families moved away to other cities for job transfers, and other good friends moved to a bigger house nearby. The character of the street changed. Things can shift quickly, especially as kids are growing up. You are probably not the only one on your cul-de-sac outgrowing your house.

My other observation is that people who do big renovations like this end up moving within a few years anyway. My evidence for this is a couple friends who did similar projects in the Washington, DC area about ten years ago. At the time, the cost was around $600k which seemed mindblowing. Within about 5-7 years of finishing the renovation, both sold and purchased bigger, non-pop-up houses nearby. Even a great renovation has tradeoffs compared to a house built to be bigger.

Finally, this is really nit-picky but if you want your adult children to enjoy staying at your house someday, put a second bathroom upstairs. It's awkward sharing a bathroom with my adult siblings and their spouses -- especially the spouses.

@circonium thanks for the advice. I think you're probably right about the cul-de-sac/neighbors issue. Have been discussing this endlessly with my wife. It's hard to walk away from a good thing, but I agree with you that it's not logical to assume it's a permanent benefit of the location.

Appreciate your anecdote about friends doing big renos and then moving.

Have you considered adding a single bedroom in the back yard? One more bedroom would allow 2 boys to share instead of 3 boys. It doesn't need its own bathroom.

@Gabe This is a question only you & your wife can answer. if you love the neighborhood & general area ( for a variety of reasons ) & don’ t want to move I see nothing wrong with remodeling to suit your needs & wants. Those types of major renovations are very common in my So Cal beach neighborhood, several ongoing right now. . And forget about costs going down. They aren’t. I would get another quote, but the cost doesn’t seem unreasonable to me, Houses in our area sell for $1,000 a sq ft on up, and some of those are ”fixer uppers”.

Neighbors should take their objections up with local lawmakers, not with a neighbor who is following the law but building something they don't like.

I agree with Joseph. I have a flat roofed single level MCM home . A neighbor built a “Tuscan” revival 2 story, very large. I hate it, but wouldn’t think about voicing my distaste . That’s what THEY like. I’m sure they don’t care for my very modern home & landscape. Different strokes ..

In my town there would be HUGE dissent from the neighbors if the house is very oversized for the neighborhood. Not the end of the world, but if the vibe is keeping you there, the vibe may change. We had a similar situation, four kids, outgrowing a nice house on the perfect idyllic street. I even had my sister on the street! We moved across town to a much larger house and it was great for the years the kids were in K-12, and even into the college years. After a while, everyone moved out and we moved back to our old street in a nice small house that is perfect for now. All this to say....as long as you keep the kids in their same school, maybe you could find another house in town that will work for this next phase.

Personally. I prefer the more eclectic mix of architectural styles in my neighborhood. There is a wide variety of sizes and styles . Makes for very interesting walks ….

Definitely get more bids - $7k of sunk cost out of $1MM may be a bargain buyout to learn you may have been seriously overquoted. We just experienced a variation on this with a weather related insurance claim. Because our lake house will be torn up taking care of the damage anyway, we're going to add significantly more improvements and get it all done at once. It's been a beating to find other contractors who will travel to the relatively remote area but persistence has resulted in a huge payoff. We discovered that the bid from the contractor who helped mitigate the initial damage is twice as much as other contractors - hundreds of thousands more. Even though his emergency mitigation fees were overpriced, it's a small percentage of the scope and we're thrilled to settle up with him and walk toward a much better deal.

I agree with you - it truly is a matter of deciding how we want to spend our money and every scenario has it's price and risk. Three years ago, our process for deciding whether to move or add on to our primary house was to actually house hunt, which is different from just knowing market dollar value. That informed our decision to remodel, even though we were aware of the risk of being one of the larger and most updated homes in our neighborhood. Our architect drew plans and our realtor told us about trends in our area and recommended a cap on the improvements. The HOA approved the plans, we communicated well with our neighbors and responded promptly to any complaints. We ended up spending a little more than our realtor recommended but we've already recovered the investment in increased value. BTW, our cul-de-sac is now full of trades working on our neighbor's homes.

Smart? Lucky? Maybe a little of both. we just did our best to gather facts and balance them with matters of the heart knowing that life is full of wild cards like neighbors moving, adult children moving, extreme weather and pandemics (yeah, ok - the pandemic never crossed our minds, almost glad we didn't know!)

Good luck, hope you let us know what you decide.

Agree with Svetlana about the prospects of buying a home in SoCal. We just did that and the process was brutal. Houses are listed to show over the weekend, then bids are closed on Monday. The two day’s showings generated 24 offers, several all cash. We got the house, paying $200k over asking. The Zillow estimate is now $155k over what we paid a few months ago. We love the house and haven't seen any listings we like better, or for less per square foot. It’s absolutely crazy, requiring a thick skin, high frustration tolerance, and fast decision making.

Do you have a plan for where you'd live during construction? I would consider in your decisionmaking the costs (both financial and psychologic) of living in an apartment or temporary situation with four young kids for a year. One of the downsides of renovating is that you likely lose a year of the kids running around with the neighbors during the prime running-around-with-the-neighbors years.

Thanks for posting update and video!