Finally Done--Total Rehab/1000 SF Addition in Ann Arbor, Michigan

[Sarah Lorenz]

My husband/partner and I recently closed on this massive project in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The original house was an 850 sf ranch on a crawlspace, built as a modular home in the 50s, with really shabby construction. We debated about keeping it as a rental, flipping the existing house, or adding on. As you can see, a total gut and 1000sf addition won out. This is in a neighborhood close to downtown Ann Arbor, just half a block from the river and walking distance to the University of Michigan medical center, campus, and downtown Ann Arbor. We tried to design it to fit well in the sweet little neighborhood and have the style of the old Ann Arbor homes, which sell like hotcakes, but the amenities of a newer house--mud room/first floor laundry, master suite with luxury bath, large kitchen, etc. It is about 95% new house--we kept the foundation and just a little of the 2x1 framing--and we were able to save about 80% of the wood floors in the original house and extend them into the kitchen/dining room in the addition. We put a new foundation under the addition, with a flex room and full bathroom down there so people could use it as a guest suite--total of 3 bedrooms, 3 baths. Homeowners in Michigan really like their basements! We also added a garage. It looks adorable and fits the neighborhood perfectly, but next time my husband wins and we'll do the 2 car garage. The master suite is all by itself on the new second floor, which I also won't do next time--we had several interested buyers looking for a retirement home, which surprised me a little, and they wanted a first-floor master. There is a pretty small pool of like-new houses near downtown Ann Arbor, especially those of decent size, and we have a lot of transplants coming from all over the country to work at the university or other businesses. Our first offer was from a paleontologist relocating from Oxford University, the next one was from two Google employees, and in the end, the new city administrator of Ann Arbor, recruited from Austin, was the buyer, which was kind of cool. This is a new niche that we are exploring, so learning about the pool of buyers was interesting. There is scope in cities like Ann Arbor for this type of project, but you definitely need deep pockets and a long timeline. It took us several months to get costs on our various options (reno as-is vs. addition), and then the building process took about 10 months. Finding a builder in a hot market is difficult, especially one that can handle a project of this size and will allow you to make a profit. Next time, we'll be able to mobilize faster, and we are working to be able to contract this type of thing ourselves. We couldn't resist listing it in the spring market before it was finished (tile was going in, etc), and when we didn't have offers, we weren't sure if the price was too high for the neighborhood or if people were just reluctant to offer on a house under construction. It was the latter. Next time, we'll be more patient and wait until it is completely finished and staged. Definitely a learning process, but we were really happy with the final product!