You’ve Outgrown the House. Now Do You Enlarge It or Move?
Have you outgrown your house? Weigh these factors when deciding whether to expand a family home vs. move to a larger one:
- The feasibility of your property to support house expansion.
- Your financial appetite.
- The state of the real estate vs. construction markets.
- The woes of moving vs. the woes of construction.
As a homeowner with a growing family, it’s easy to recognize when you need a bigger house. It’s the path to bigger that’s not always so clear. How do you compare one path versus the other? The answers are elusive without performing due diligence.
What follows here is a resource for figuring out if you can put an addition on your house, based on the rules and regulations of your town or city and state. This article provides no cost or low cost DIY suggestions. If DIY is not your thing, you may still want to read this article to know what is involved, so you can speak knowingly to any professional you may ultimately hire.
Connecticut property owners can obtain a property report for any address in the state. It will provide the due diligence results that are outlined in this article .
How well do you know your property?
Start by analyzing your property to determine if it can support a house expansion in terms of the rules and regulations that apply to it. If you can’t expand because of regulations, or if you would need to undertake a lengthy and rigorous land use review process to get waivers from regulations (at the risk of being denied), then your decision may already be made for you. Some houses just can’t be expanded due to constraints related to local requirements, so start there first.
If you checked the regulations when you purchased your house originally, good on you! But now check again. Regulations are updated periodically, and sometimes they change substantially. If you haven’t ever checked, but think you are in good standing nonetheless, you should think again. You could be surprised by the applicability of a regulation that lurks in plain sight but is escaping your notice.
Most people start thinking about a house addition in terms of where it makes sense in the flow of their existing house layout, to support the way they want to live in the house. And that’s an alluring approach, as it amps up enthusiasm for the dream of expanding the home. But don’t get married to any ideas until you’ve checked out a few potentially dream-altering constraints.
Regulations that may possibly come to bear on a house addition include:
- the local health code
- local inland wetland regulations
- local historic district or homeowner association rules (if your property is so subject)
- municipal zoning regulations, including
- coastal area management review if you live near the coast
- flood damage prevention ordinance if you are in a flood plain
- special overlay districts particular to your area
The Local Health Code
The Health Code comes into play most meaningfully in terms of water supply and sanitary disposal. In other words, how is your house supplied with water and how does it get rid of sewage? If you answer well and septic system, you will have more to consider than if you answer municipal water utility and sewer system.
One reason is separation. When it comes to dwellings, the local health code is very interested in the separation of sewage and drinking water. If your water comes out of the ground of your property and the sewage goes into the ground of your property, there is good reason to regulate the separation of those two systems in order to prevent contamination and serious health risk. On the other hand, if either water or waste comes or goes by way of a municipal service pipe, the impact on your planning will be much less rigorous.
More than separating these two critical utilities, there may probably also be separation distances in your local code that regulate the proximity of a septic tank to a house foundation. If so, this will play into the equation of siting your addition, as I will explain later in this article.
It bears mentioning that property lines are irrelevant when it comes to separation of wells and septic systems. When you install a septic system it must respect the separation distance to the wells of adjacent properties, and when you drill a well, it must be separated from adjacent septic systems of other properties. This goes to protecting your neighbors from the dangers of contamination by your system, as well as protecting you from contamination by theirs.
Another concern of the health code is that a septic tank be sized appropriately to the amount of sewage that will be entering the septic tank. A common misconception is that the bathroom count of a house will determine tank size. In fact, it is the bedroom count. And because people get tricky with calling their bedroom a den, an office or a study, local health codes have pre-emptively defined the word ‘bedroom’ for us (FYI the presence or absence of a closet has NOTHING to do with the definition – that’s just something the realtors have made up). All that said, the local sanitarian has the authority to declare a room as a bedroom under the premise of “walks like a duck, quacks like a duck – it’s a duck”. In short, be guided by the health code definition, but be prepared to convince a skeptic if it appears that you are floating a duck.
Here is where the health code component of your deliberation gets dynamic. If you increase the NET number of bedrooms by adding onto your house, and if the size of your septic tank won’t support that bedroom count, you will need to include the replacement of your septic system into your budget. And if, because of its age, you were thinking you would upgrade it anyway, the well / septic / foundation separation distances come into play to limit where an addition could be built in relation to the new septic system (or vice versa). Keep in mind that the septic placement is also restricted by the well location.
I don’t mean to scare you off the idea of an addition, I just mean to point out that there is potentially more to it than what meets the eye. It gets even more dynamic when other categories of regulation start to impose their requirements on the location that your dream says is “right” for the house layout, as you’ll see reading further. Please don’t let what seems like doom and gloom get you down! That said, please don’t skip over the next section because you think it doesn’t apply! Wetlands do not only occur in low lying areas.
Local Inland Wetlands
Like the effluent from septic systems, the soils of inland wetland areas know no borders. What I mean is wetlands that are present on a neighbor’s land must be considered when planning the location of your addition. I think that’s one of the biggest misconceptions of the average homeowner about wetlands and construction.
The protection of wetlands is vital to the ecology and natural habitat of your area, and your state is tasked by the federal government to regulate construction that is proposed in or near a wetland. Generally speaking, activities inside the wetland area are very rigorously limited and regulated (a boardwalk to a boat dock, for instance). Activities within the “upland area”, usually a 100’ buffer zone from the delineated line of wetlands, are subject to review and approval by a local commission, and activities free and clear of the upland area, which is considered non-regulated area, are generally only reviewed very briefly for confirmation, and then released with no additional requirements.
What are wetlands and how do you determine if they’re on your property? It’s not easy. For instance, boggy soil is likely wetlands but not all wetlands are boggy. The test of whether an area of land contains wetlands or not must be determined by a soil scientist (sometimes referred to as an environmental engineer), who evaluates the land, takes soil samples and analyzes them in a laboratory. But I’m getting ahead…there’s a process to follow. In short, you first investigate wetlands maps. If they indicate wetlands on your property, you then confirm it by hiring a soil scientist and hire a licensed surveyor to map it. If simply knowing there are wetlands to contend with in the vicinity of your addition discourages you from carrying your plans forward, you obviously wouldn’t need to go through the process of confirming and mapping.
Where do you find wetlands maps to investigate if they might be on or near your property? If your municipality has a GIS (Geographic Information System), an online resource for researching attributes of any given property, there is a chance that wetlands information is provided there, but not a certainty. If it isn’t, or if there’s no GIS where you live, your municipality will have physical maps that you can research (with their help) at Town Hall or wherever the maps are kept.
If you decide to go forward and there is any reasonable proximity of wetlands to your property, the Wetlands Officer will more than likely require you to have the soils analyzed, staked out, surveyed and mapped. This is their prerogative. Again, if there is any reasonable proximity, and you want a building permit, you will have to go through this step, so include that cost into your budget.
You may wonder: if they have a map why do I need to produce one? The answer is that their map is an approximation, based on aerial imaging, and each municipality more or less tasks its residents with delineating the border of wetlands more precisely when they apply for a building permit. Over time, they are assembling a wetlands jigsaw puzzle, one piece at a time. While this may seem like an undue burden that hampers your planning, the bright side is that this activity may ultimately demonstrate the area of your property believed to be wetlands in fact is actually not! I’ve seen it happen many times.
Local Historic District or Homeowner Association Rules
There’s nothing to be surprised by in terms of this category. You know if your property is situated in a local historic district or if your house is on the national or state register of historic places. That fact was probably showcased to you when you purchased the property. Similarly, if the house you live in belongs to a home owner’s association, you would have to know that already. No unawareness lurking around there.
I mention these governing bodies because they are vested with the authority to grant or deny or otherwise modify the proposed addition to your house. They are usually comprised of volunteers who may not be strictly guided by the charters or responsibilities of the body or commission on which they serve. In other words, a committee members’ personal prejudice or personal agenda may work its way into the mix. In that way, the results of these types of reviews can be a wildcard to your ambitions.
As a way to somewhat tame the wild card, you may want to sit in the audience at the next hearing of your local historic district to gauge the rigor (or lack thereof) of the commission. The hearings are usually public and open to anyone. If on the other hand you belong to an HOA, the same advice applies if review meetings are part of the approval process. Additionally, if you speak with neighbors who went through the process make sure that their project was not too long ago in the past. These commissions change commissioners periodically and the judgement of one commission can vary in spirit from the judgment of a prior commission quite substantially.
Municipal zoning regulations
There are a variety of zoning regulations that could upset the layout you are contemplating for the ‘perfect’ addition to your house. Although regulations will vary from town to town or city to city, there are many common zoning concepts or principles that you will find wherever you are. There’s a lot going on in zoning regulations. Coming soon, I will provide a thorough explanation of zoning regulations by linking here to an article that digs both deep and wide into the subject of zoning.
Here below, I provide a rudimentary explanation of the bulk requirements and restrictions that every building is subject to (restrictions that are meant to limit the physical bulk of the building), I write a bit about permitted uses, and I touch on some ordinances, typically incorporated into zoning regulations, which can bear significantly on your addition project if your property is subject to them. You can find your municipality’s zoning regulations on its website or by visiting its land use department.
Permitted uses are simply that: uses of a building that are permitted without challenge in a given zoning district. Permitted uses in a residential zoning district will include a residential addition. So in terms of a house addition, there is no worry. That is, unless the addition is meant to be occupied by a home based business. In that case, the use may still be permitted but more likely it is categorized and treated as a Special Use. A Special Use is a use that is neither automatically denied nor automatically permitted – it customarily has specific attributes or tendencies that need to be considered before being either allowed or prohibited. With a home based business, perhaps it is parking, or signage, or noise or odors or vehicle traffic that would be generated by the proposed business. In any event, it usually involves a hearing before the zoning commission and a proposed site plan, perhaps with other supporting documents, such as architectural drawings of the proposed addition plan and exterior elevations showing the proposed appearance of the addition in context to the existing house and showing proposed signage.
Unless your addition will house something other than a strictly residential use, the more significant zoning factors that will go towards determining the feasibility of your addition will be bulk restrictions. Bulk restrictions and requirements are a set of characteristics meant to limit the physical bulk of a building. They vary based on zoning district and include characteristics such as setbacks, maximum height, minimum lot size, maximum lot coverage, maximum floor area, and others.
Some characteristics of bulk requirements relate to structures and some relate to the land parcel, or lot (your land). Some are static numbers (number of stories or minimum size of lot) while others are relative percentages (percentage of lot coverage allowed, percentage of floor area allowed).
To check these factors against the plan you have in mind for your addition, you need various pieces of information. For instance, you need to have a grasp on where your property lines are, know the total square footage of the footprint of every structure on your land, know the house’s position on the land relative to the property lines and know the grading of your property. The no-nonsense way to understand all this is to hire a surveyor to stake out the property lines, survey the footprints and meaningful overhangs of structures, perform a topography survey, and then draw a survey plan representing all this information for you to fully understand your property and for later use during permitting.
If you know pretty much where your property lines are and if there is clearly ample room on a large parcel that is relatively flat, then this is not such a critical issue for you. But if you are on a smaller lot where the property lines are vague and the ground is sloped or seriously irregular, do your best to check things out.
A limited alternative to hiring a surveyor, with a not at all similar precision of a result, is to research the GIS of your municipality, where your lot will be delineated with property line dimensions (if no GIS exists, your town will likely have a paper plot plan of your property on file). The footprints of the structures that exist on the land may or may not be shown. If they are, they will be merely representative, but not precise. If the GIS is good, it will show contour lines, which will help you understand the grading of your property.
There are ways to DIY a property survey to a fairly accurate degree, suitable to generate confidence during preliminary planning, but not for use as a legal document.
Using GIS information you can generally gauge the configuration of your lot, the structures situated on it and the open space that has potential to be built upon. Print your plot plan to scale and using an architectural scale ruler, draw in the required setbacks as lines that are offset from the property lines to determine if the footprint of your addition will fit in the remaining available space. If your septic system is in the vicinity, draw that to scale as well to ensure the separation distance can be maintained.
Remember, this method is just to gauge feasibility, loosely. If you are finding that any part is tight or close, this method should be taken with an enormous grain of salt. It may be wise in that case to bite the bullet and bring in a surveyor. But if this method brings a positive assurance that there is ample space that’s unencumbered by regulations, then the method is a useful no-cost way to inform a “go / no go” decision on expanding your house.
With a grasp of your property facts in hand, you are ready to check it against the bulk requirements of your zoning district. Bulk requirements are fairly self defining, but to be clear let me say a few words about a few of them that will relate strongly to any addition proposal:
- Setbacks are the distances that a structure must be set back from your property lines. There is typically a front yard set back, a side yard setback and a rear yard setback. If a setback requirement is fifteen feet, that means that an addition (or any structure) cannot come to within fifteen feet of that property line. There are sometimes limited exceptions, such as eave overhangs and entry stoops.
- Maximum height is the maximum height in feet and stories that you can build. Be careful! Height is usually a defined term, as well as story. Moreover, the definition of height and the definition of story will likely speak about the ground plane from which the height is measured, which is usually also a defined term. Reference the definitions chapter of the zoning regulation to learn how your municipality approaches these terms.
- Lot Coverage is the maximum percentage of your lot that is allowed to be covered by structures, (sometimes including their eaves and overhangs, sometimes not), including garages, sheds, swimming pools, decks, porches, etc. Lot coverage is also a defined term and you should check what it means in your municipality’s zoning regulation, in terms of what exactly counts towards coverage. Your addition will certainly count towards total coverage – you are checking, really, to see how much coverage you have left on your property to use for an addition after you’ve added up all the existing coverage. Lot coverage often refers to structures and structure is often a defined term, too. Patios and driveways count towards lot coverage in some municipalities but not in others.
- Maximum Floor Area is a ratio of your habitable floor area to your lot area. Here again is a factor that is relative to lot size, but in a different way. The definition that matters here is habitable floor area. This often excludes non conditioned space (garages and basements), spaces with limited headroom, and other exclusions. Your zoning regulation may not have a Floor Area Ratio requirement, but if it does it likely relates strongly to the definition of habitable space.
As you can see, definitions are enormously important and can sway the interpretation of a zoning regulation greatly. ABC – Always Be Checking – the terminology of the regulations to see if it is defined.
Not all bulk requirements will be relative to your situation, though. For instance, if you are simply adding on to your house, you will not be creating your lot from a larger tract of land and therefore the minimum lot size, which is always stated, is moot. But what if you notice that the minimum lot size in your zoning district is stated as larger than your actual lot size? This is not unusual where the housing stock has existed for generations. It likely means that the lot and its structure were created before the zoning ordinance was created, and so are treated as pre-existing non-conformance.
In a situation like that, the existing condition is “grandfathered”, meaning it is allowed to remain unchanged. It is what they call a “pre-existing non-conformance”. This concept applies to all of the bulk requirements. If the lot and its structures existed prior to the zoning ordinance and you don’t change anything, then no worries. Anything new, however, like an addition, must conform with every applicable zoning regulation or be granted a waiver based on a hardship (which is a very rigorously defined thing).
While these rudiments of zoning consideration provided above will give a good sense of feasibility and will address a number of common drivers in zoning conformance, I highly recommend (after you have absorbed this information) to visit with your zoning enforcement officer to discover any other regulations that may apply to your particular property, such as overlay districts or special ordinances particular to your municipality’s geographic location or its policies.
Two such regulations are a Flood Damage Prevention Ordinance and A Coastal Area Management Regulation.
Flood Damage Prevention Ordinance
According to the National Flood Insurance Program’s website, 20,000 communities have adopted a Flood Damage Prevention Ordinance. If a community has been identified by the Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Emergency Management Agency as a flood prone region, it will likely have a flood damage ordinance in place. If it doesn’t within a year after being identified as a flood prone region, then the community will be sanctioned, which means that Federal agencies like FEMA cannot provide financial assistance in the aftermath of a flood disaster.
This is a deep subject matter that warrants its own article. Meanwhile, a number one consideration for anyone planning an addition that is situated in a flood zone is to understand the concept of substantial improvement. Basically and in short, if the cost of your project is greater than 50% of the appraised value of the building (not the value of the entire property – just the building that is being enlarged, and not the assessed value – the appraised value), then it is a substantial improvement to that building and the building must be brought into full compliance with all applicable FEMA regulations. This is sometimes referred to as “The 50% Rule”. It is potentially an incredibly onerous requirement that could completely sink your plans and plunge your budget into unfathomably deep water (please pardon the metaphors – I couldn’t resist!).
The emphasis of appraised value over assessed value is important because one is the basis for the 50% Rule analysis and the other isn’t. In the absence of an appraiser’s report, some municipalities will allow a determination of the assessed value to equal 70% of the appraised value. So you would simply use the value that your property has been assessed for property tax purposes and divide it by .70 in order to arrive at an acceptable “working” appraised value.
If you do not live in a beach house or in a beach community, DON’T THINK YOU’RE SAFE!! The most charming and innocuous little creek or brook can signify a potential flood zone, even if it is not on your property. Check your property either on the GIS of your municipality or at FEMA.gov, where you can investigate if your property is indeed in a flood zone. If it is, print the portion of the map showing your property and indicating the flood zone type and elevation. Print the map even if there is no flood zone, in case you need to prove it at some point down the line.
If your property is not in any flood zone – whew! No worries. If it is in a flood zone, the next important step will be to understand the elevation of your first floor in terms of the flood elevation that is declared in the mapping. If the Design Flood Elevation (DFE) of your addition (sometimes the bottom of the lowest structural member, like a beam or joists; sometimes the top of finish floor of lowest habitable space) is below the flood elevation of your zone, then the substantial improvement provisions of the regulations will kick in – you will be limited to 50% of your house’s appraised value. If you are in the flood zone but your DFE is above the flood elevation, then the substantial improvement provisions of the regulations will not apply to your existing house.
In any event, however, understand that any new construction that is lower than the flood elevation will be required to conform fully with FEMA regulations.
If your DFE is below the zone’s flood elevation as established by mapping, and you are certain you can finish your addition within the prescribed cost, then moving forward you will need to demonstrate the accuracy of the DFE for permitting, based on a Flood Elevation Certificate. A Flood Elevation Certificate is a standardized form certificate that records the floor elevation of your house. It is a legal document that must be prepared, signed and sealed by a licensed surveyor. If you don’t already have one for your property, obtain it as soon as possible to best inform your planning – don’t make assumptions for planning’s sake and then be disappointed when it’s finally recorded and you must make adjustments.
Coastal Area Management Regulations
While a Flood Damage Prevention Ordinance relates to the presence of any water body – lakes, streams, ponds, rivers – and its potential to flood, Coastal Area Management regulations relate to defined and delineated coastal boundaries that are established at a state level, based on compliance with the Federal Coastal Management Act of 1972.
The coastal management review process is sometimes conflated in peoples’ minds with FEMA flood regulations. Though related by circumstance of tidal water meeting land, the two sets of regulation are not the same. Basically, one is about preserving the ecology and habitat of coastal regions and the other is about mitigating the risks of flood events. Sometimes the two go together, but not always. You can have a property that’s in a flood plain but not in a coastal boundary. But if you live on the coast and you are in a coastal management zone, then you are most likely in a flood plain.
Generally speaking, the management of coastal area development is meant to preserve and protect the ecology and natural habitat of coastal areas, much like inland wetlands regulation does in non-coastal areas. In fact, coastal boundary areas are usually comprised heavily of tidal wetland areas. And yes, a property could be subject to both sets of regulations – inland and tidal.
Also similar to an inland wetlands review, there are degrees of rigor within a tidal wetlands review. Activities proposed on the water side of the mean high water mark are very rigorously regulated (boat docks, sea walls, etc.) with a number of documents and plans required to be submitted for review and comment that is conducted through a public hearing. Proposed activities landward of the mean high water line are more moderately but still rigorously reviewed, again requiring document submission and a public hearing for review and comment. Within the area of the coastal boundary but generously set back from the high water line (1,000 feet in my area), the review may be performed by municipal staff without triggering the need for a public hearing.
Note however that minor additions to an existing building, or a small detached accessory building like a shed or garage, are generally exempted from the coastal zone regulations. Keep in mind that “minor” may not be a defined term, but if the addition is larger than the existing house, it may not qualify as minor. If, however, your addition is more than 100 feet from the mean high water line it will be exempt nonetheless, as would be a new house construction, for that matter.
These are likely the requirements you will find, but one state may vary from another and so you should investigate for your property as your plans may warrant.
Further considerations
The vast majority of this article has focused on the feasibility of a property to support an expansion of an existing house. If the feasibility of your property checks out affirmatively for the expansion, there are other factors to consider that bear mentioning before I close, though I will not get into great detail.
The financial impact of your decision whether to stay and enlarge or move on to bigger should be a primary factor. I’m not a financial advisor, and you should probably consult with one, but one point that I’d like to make is about mortgage payments.
If you do not own your house outright and if you are in the midst of paying down a mortgage, it’s worth considering where you are in the repayment of the mortgage. Mortgage payments early in the repayment period are heavy with interest, with only a minor portion of your monthly payment going to principal. As you get deeper into the repayment, that ratio slowly inverts until one day the majority of your payment is going to pay down the principal.
If you have been in your house for some time, and your interest-to-principal ratio has inverted, you may want to favor the option of an expansion over a move, to avoid spending a lot of money on interest payments again. Of course, if you finance your construction you will still have interest payments, but you should analyze both scenarios if you are concerned with long term finance expenses and if they are a factor in your decision making process.
Another point to consider is the current market place for building versus the current market place for transacting real estate. If construction is trending low in its pricing and the real estate market is in a lackluster lull, that might bode well for expanding where you are now rather than moving. Conversely, high construction costs in the face of a thriving real estate market could make a move appealing, in spite of feasibility to expand. And if you go that way, be sure to showcase your research into feasibility as a marketing asset!
Finally, I would coach you to really think about the anxiety of moving versus the anxiety of living through construction. They are both potentially extremely miserable. Each is highly subjective to the individual, however. Comparing the two, it seems to me that the anxiety of moving would have a shorter duration than the anxiety of living through construction. That may be worth consideration if you are really can’t decide and need a feather to tip the scale one way or the other. However, in terms of living through construction, I think it depends on how discreetly the addition is located in the scheme of things compared to how central it may be.
At any rate, before you can meaningfully put consideration to these factors, you must first understand if one side of the decision, expanding the house, is even possible. If it’s not, and you are intent on providing more space for your family, then there’s no decision to make – you are moving!
I hope that you have found this article to be helpful to you. I invite you to sign up for email updates that will alert you to new articles on similar topics, and ones that go deeper into some of the subject matter covered topically here.