Alteration & Addition

When an A&A beats a rebuild, what the approvals involve, and how long you are out of the house.

Internal courtyard cut into an existing house

16 min · 3 articles

In this guide

7 min · 26 February 2026
Rebuild or A&A? How to Decide
Choose an A&A when the structure will give you the plan you want and the house is worth keeping. Choose a rebuild when it will not. The test is structural, not aesthetic — and it is answered by a survey in the first fortnight, before anyone draws anything.
5 min · 14 May 2026
Adding a Lift to a Landed Home
A lift is the most requested addition on a resale landed property, and it is far cheaper to install during an A&A than afterwards. Where the house has a vertical void it can rise through, the job is mostly mechanical. Where it does not, cutting through the floors is structural work: a professional engineer designs it, BCA approves the structural plans before work starts, and the finished lift needs BCA's permit to operate.
4 min · 11 June 2026
Before and After: What an A&A Can Actually Fix
An A&A can fix daylight, circulation, the relationship between the kitchen and the garden, and the absence of a lift. It cannot fix a floor-to-floor height that is too low, a structural grid in the wrong place, or a plot orientation that puts every principal room on the west. And it has a legal edge: URA treats a scheme that adds more than half the floor area, replaces more than half the external walls or changes more than half the structure as a reconstruction, not an A&A.

Seven other guides, and the rest of the writing.

Costs, approvals, timelines and the decisions that are expensive to change later.