Your Trusted Choice for Quality Renovation & Remodeling Since 2016
Your Trusted Choice for Quality Renovation & Remodeling Since 2016
The trap is the contractor who quotes you a hard-cost number that looks competitive without disclosing what is sitting in soft cost. The number you compare across bids needs to be the all-in completion cost, not the framing-and-finishes hard-cost line. Our estimates put soft costs on the same page as hard costs so the comparison is honest from week one.
Investors who run the math correctly on soft costs win. Investors who optimize on hard cost alone get the lowest bid and the highest surprise. Our job is to put both numbers on the table the day we shake hands. Real numbers, no surprises, that is the operations promise.
– Derek Halvorsen, Operations Manager
Investors layering an addition with an ADU rental conversion need to model the adu vs rental cash flow on the post-renovation basis, which means accurate soft cost. We have seen Lysander deals pencil at 9 percent cash-on-cash with honest soft cost modeling and the same deals miss at 3 percent when soft cost was buried.
Soft costs on a second-story addition cost basis tend to run slightly higher (13 to 24 percent of hard) because of the additional engineering required for first-floor reinforcement. Investors weighing a footprint addition versus going up should run both soft-cost scenarios before deciding.
Home Addition Soft Costs Homeowners Miss
SAP Construction has been modeling honest soft costs for investor projects since 2016. Schedule a consultation and your project manager will walk the property, line-item the soft costs, and deliver a transparent estimate within 24 hours.
There is a tell that gives away a poorly designed sunroom. From the curb, the new roofline does not quite meet the old one. The pitch is wrong. The fascia detail is one inch off. The corner trim profile does not match. The sunroom reads as bolted on, not built in. In Geddes and the surrounding western suburbs, where lots are tight and street-facing facades matter, the difference between a sunroom that adds value and one that subtracts it usually comes down to whether the new roofline was designed to integrate with the existing structure or whether it was ordered out of a prefab catalog.
If you are finishing a Marcellus basement and the contractor wants to use fiberglass batts against the foundation wall, stop the project. Fiberglass batt insulation below grade is one of the most predictable failure modes in CNY basement construction. Within five years the foundation cools the batt, condensation forms, the batt holds the moisture, and mold and rot follow. Closed cell spray foam basement insulation is the only foundation-wall insulation strategy that survives our climate without these failures.
The Main Street corridor in North Syracuse is lined with postwar Cape Cod homes that share the same upstairs problem. Two small bedrooms tucked under sharply sloped rafters, knee walls swallowing the floor area, and ceilings so low that adults have to duck along one side. The square footage is technically there, but the way the roof comes down makes half of it unusable. A well-executed dormer expansion is how families in these capes turn that wasted upstairs into a real bedroom without adding a single foot to the home's footprint.
In Auburn's Historic District the lots are deep and the zoning often supports a detached unit, which makes the structure the easy part. The hard part is buried in the yard. Running power, water, and sewer from the main house to a detached accessory dwelling unit is a trenching and routing problem with frost, code, and old utilities all in play. Plan the detached ADU utilities before you pour the foundation, because retrofitting a service run after the slab is down is the expensive way to learn this lesson.
Our experts are here to help. Contact us directly for a consultation or any specific questions about your project.
Our experts are here to help. Contact us directly for a consultation or any specific questions about your project.
