Opinion - move or improve?

I know in general it is usually better money wise to get a house you like instead of adding on to a current house, but I wanted to get everybody's opinion on this.

Our house right now was a compromise, we had spent 7 months looking for something and finally found this one. It wasn't perfect but it was the best we could find on the market at the time. We bought our house for 228000 four years ago and it's currently valued (according to the town's website) at 217000. It's small, only 1100 sq ft, 2 beds and 1 bath, but we have 1.8 acres of land that backs up to a large (10+ acres) section of wooded property.

My wife wants a garage and a master suite with a 2nd bathroom, and from all I can tell that would be at least a $50,000 to maybe $100,000 addition. Our place is low-middle end of the street with a few houses valued at over $300,000.

So, I'm trying to figure out if it would make sense to plan on getting a home improvement loan and going ahead with building an addition or start from scratch and put our house up on the market and try to find one that has everything my wife wants.

 

In my opinion, as long as the bones of the house are good, the neighborhood is good, and the town is good, I would add on. At least you know what you have. You never know what you're getting when you're buying. You can do all kinds of inspections, but you never knnow. Also, you don't have to worry about getting another mortgage and starting over at 30 years and don't forget the cost of moving.