Skip to content
Home Blog Real Estate Business Management

Do You Know Which Home Improvements Will Pay Off?

Steve Cook
2 min read
Do You Know Which Home Improvements Will Pay Off?

When you’re planning improvement to your property do you know which ones will pay off when you rent it or sell and which won’t?  Sure, bathrooms and kitchens are the core of the house and they have to be in good shape.  However, those projects can be very expensive and by the time you done, they may not be the best on a dollar for dollar basis.

Somebody actually studies these issues.  Remodeling Magazine conducts an extraordinary survey of a long list of typical home projects and costs them out by region.  Then it asks a sampling of Realtors to rank the value of each in a home listed for sale today.  Finally it computes the cost vs. bottom line value of each project.

Home Improvement Projects on the Rebound

With the housing recovery, home improvement projects generally are paying off better as higher prices help pay back the costs incurred by investors and owners.  For 2014, the cost-value ratio stands at 66.1%, a jump of 5.5 points over last year and the largest increase since 2005, when the ratio jumped 6.1 points to reach its high of 86.7%,

In other words, you’ll recoup an average of only two thirds of your expenditure in terms of the value of your property when you either sell or refinance.  As home prices rise, so are the values of remodeling projects.

This year’s winner in the midrange category was removing existing an entry door and jambs and replace with new 20-gauge steel unit, including clear dual-pane half-glass panel, jambs, and aluminum threshold with composite stop.  Total cost was $1,162, value to the home was $1,122 and it almost returned every penny for a 96.6% recoup ratio.

In the expensive category, the top project was replacing 1,250 square feet of existing siding with new fiber-cement siding, factory primed and factory painted.  Include all 4/4 and 5/4 trim using either fiber-cement boards or cellular PVC.  Cost was $13,378, added value to the home was $11,645 and the recoup ratio was 87.0%.

At the other end of the spectrum, the biggest waste of your home improvement budget would be a home office remodel, at $28,000, increasing the value by only $13,697 for a recoup ratio of 48.9%.

Constructions costs rose slightly year but improved resale value of residential housing had more of an influence in the cost-value ratio.  A modest 2.2% increase in average national construction costs was more than offset by an 11.5% improvement in average national resale value.  This reverses a trend that began in 2010–11, when construction costs dropped dramatically, but resale values dropped even more, driving the ratio down.  The situation began to change in 2013, when lower costs were mainly responsible for across-the-board improvement in the cost-value ratio.  While this was good news for the remodeling market, costs remained volatile and housing values had yet to stabilize.  In what is perhaps the most positive sign in this year’s data, rising resale value is driving the overall market improvement.

Contractor Shortage?

If you’re planning a project this spring, it would be a good idea to line up your contractors now.  The same home price recovery that is making projects more cost effective for owners is filling the dance cards of contractors.  The home remodeling market should see strong growth in 2014, according to Leading Indicator of Remodeling Activity (LIRA) by the Remodeling Futures Program at the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University.  The double-digit gains in annual home improvement spending projected for the first half of the year should moderate some to just under 10 percent by the third quarter.

“As owners gain more confidence in the housing market, they are likely to undertake home improvements that they have deferred,” says Eric S. Belsky, managing director of the Joint Center.

ROI

Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.