Whole House Remodel - Need Advice

GC here, I'll try and give a little advice.

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m looking at buying a house that needs some significant renovations. It is a 1970s house that was added onto in the 80s. It has a ton of square footage, but the layout is terrible. I've sketched it out, and I think it has a lot of potential.

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First thing I'd ask is is the price good enough that it will justify a large remodel? For example, and making up numbers here, if the house is 150k and you do a large scale 50k+ remodel, is the value going to jump up enough to make it worth it. If you put 50k in a house, you want it to increase the value significantly, not just make a 150k house worth 200k, the remodel is not worth it if that is the case. So you need to look at what remodeled houses are going for in that neighborhood/area and get an idea if you could get top dollar if remodeled.

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Can someone walk me though this process? I don't want to buy it without having a plan in place for the remodel (don't want to get out over my skis on what it is going to cost).

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A few good indicators of "will I be in too deep with this remodel" as far as price goes, is HVAC and foundation. Does the house already have central air and heat? You are talking a major price jump from maybe just replacing a unit to getting a house central air ready/running all new duct work. 70's house should have it. If the roof is bad that is another trade that will really bump of the price. If it's not too bad it's probably just best to wait because most people don't want to pay for a roof out of pocket, especially once they see the estimate.

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Do I hire people to go out to the house, look at it, give me a quote, and then I put an offer in on the house? Do I pay someone to draw up plans for a house where my offer may not be accepted?

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If you called me and told me you wanted an estimate BEFORE you own the house, I'd politely decline going out there. A large scale remodel estimate takes a lot of time to do it right. We give line item break downs for every trade, not just a good ol boy estimate and look around for a few minutes and say "yea we can do it, it'll cost you about 60k though". Especially wouldn't go out there before you own it if you're shopping around estimates. We are as busy as we've ever been right now, but I can probably count on one hand how many jobs we've gotten in a situation where we looked at something before someone bought the home.

I get it, it's a tough spot for you because you'd like to know how much it cost but it's a tough spot for the contractor as well because no one wants to spend days on an estimate/inspection and give someone a price and the person not even buy the house. There are probably people out there that would charge you a set amount to put an estimate together, but then you have a fairly steep bill just for an estimate that might make you not even put in a bid. If you were very interested and would volunteer to pay for my time I'd probably go out and look around with you and give you a rough estimate. I'd do that for free if you owned the home. I don't know if that sounds bad, it's just hard to work for free on projects where there's a very low chance you get the job.

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Do I need an architect? I feel like I have a general idea of where things would need to move, but I don't know if having an expert look at it would be better. Would a draftsman be better than an architect, because it would just be moving internal walls, not adding anything exterior? Anyone have recs on who I should call? I don't expect there would be any plans, so I guess the architect would have to go out to the house and measure everything out before laying out the new floor plan?

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A good contractor can do this for you without an architect. Moving walls around isn't the hardest thing in the world to do, you just have to be able to wrap your mind around it and know load bearing walls. I could walk around with my framer/carpenter and talk with them for a short while and we'd know where to go. Architects are good, but I've never needed one on a remodel, just new construction.

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Should I get a contractor?

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I personally am always going to say yes to this. Especially if someone is wanting to DIY.

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I've had work done in my current house over the years and know who I'd call to get the cabinetry and walls done. I'd have to find someone to fix the bathrooms. Feel like, at that point, I'd be the general contractor, and I don't know if I want that responsibility.

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Just being honest, a contractor is probably going to make about 15% on top of what the cost is. If it cost me 50K, it's going to run you in the 60k range. That's actually not a ton of profit when you consider the work and organization that goes into a project like that and the amount of money the contractor is floating the whole time. You also get someone that has most likely been using the same subs/employees for years that know what they're doing. Not guys that are going to be cutting corners and not pulling permits and getting an old house up to code.

Hope that at least helps somewhat. I'd be happy to answer any other questions.

Thanks for the responses. We would be reworking so much of the house that I want someone to second guess me and tell me if I'm an idiot with what I think the layout would need to be. Simple stuff like "you'd put the closet on this wall, not that wall, because it would help with the flow from the bathroom" Stuff that I wouldn't ever see or know. That is why I was leaning architect.

It is just difficult to throw out a price for the house without having everythign finalized.

Yeah, you pretty much have to expect termites in New Orleans.

Will you have to pull permits for any of the work? If so, be careful that you don't get caught having to bring the whole house to current code. In FL, codes changed significantly after Hurricane Andrew in 2000, so everyone that does major renovations or add-ons has bring whole house to code. Many people are finding out that previous owners didn't pull permits and their houses are out of code when wanting to do new stuff.