Moving away and saying goodbye to familiar places and faces isn’t easy, particularly if you’re in a neighbourhood you love and the kids are settled in school. So what do you do when you’ve outgrown your home? Do you sell up and buy somewhere else, renovate or extend, or knock down the family home and build a new, individually tailored one in its place? The last option — a knockdown-rebuild (KDR) — is increasingly becoming the preferred option.
A KDR gives you the opportunity to upgrade your lifestyle and use the equity in your existing home — and it gives you a blank canvas upon which to create a new home with all the mod cons, optimum energy-efficiency, reduced maintenance and all the space you need to see your family into the future. Another benefit is that with advancements in building practices and product development, the structural integrity of the new build will be stronger than the old one and you will be able to include precisely what you want, whether that be home automation, a guest suite for visitors or extended family, or solar power.
COMMON SCENARIOS
There are three typical KDR scenarios. One is knocking down an old family home that is too small or impractical and building
