Before you invest in remodeling your home check an excerpt from an Inman News Article by Mary Umberger
Five things to know about what seems to have a payback — and what doesn’t — in home remodeling:
1. The magazine studied tightly defined jobs on a national and regional basis, as well as for many cities. It further broke down many of those projects, such as kitchen remodeling, into such categories as “minor remodel” and “high-end.” The study was conducted in collaboration with the National Association of Realtors, whose members offered payback estimates based on resales in their geographic areas. Full results can be seen at remodeling.hw.net. The top five “moderate projects” with the strongest payback at resale time, returning 72.2 percent or more of their cost: steel entry-door replacement (at a cost of about $1,200); garage-door replacement ($1,000); wooden deck addition ($11,000); replacing 10 insulated, wooden windows clad in vinyl or aluminum ($12,000); an attic bedroom addition ($51,428).
2. The best bang for the buck was garage-door replacement, Alfano said. It was the first time that project had appeared in the survey, though it made sense because consumers seem to have a strong interest in curb-appeal projects these days, he said. The top 10 spots in the national ranking are occupied by 13 projects (there were ties), and nine of these are exterior replacements, Alfano said.
3. Two projects with chunky price tags held their own in the ratings, which surprised Alfano somewhat: The full remodels of basement and attic stayed in the top 10, despite their costs. In the survey, the basement rehab typically cost $64,500 and returned 70 percent at sale time, the study said. (Although the researchers wrote a lengthy and detailed description of the project in order to gain a consistent cost estimation, the basic job, for purposes of the survey, was to finish the lower level of a house in order to create a 20-by-30-foot entertaining area with a wet bar and a 5-by-8-foot bathroom; walls and ceilings were of painted drywall, exterior walls were insulated, and wiring and plumbing were new.) The attic bedroom carried an average price tag of $51,000 and returned 72.2 percent of the cost, according to the study. (This task was to convert unfinished space to a 15-by-15-foot bedroom and 5-by-7-foot bathroom with shower. The plan would include a dormer, four new windows and closet space, with new insulation, heating and air conditioning, and wiring to code.) “They’re fairly beefy projects,” Alfano said. “But they add living space without breaking ground. People are looking for and need to have more living space, and (those two projects) are the most economical way to do it” — generally cheaper than a room addition, he said.
4. Kitchens are the darlings of home remodeling, and lately the market action is in the magazine’s definition of a minor version, Alfano said. There’s probably no such thing as a cheap kitchen remodel. But by the magazine’s terms, the minor remodel takes a functional but dated 200-square-foot kitchen with 30 linear feet of cabinetry and countertops and leaves the cabinet frames in place, replacing their fronts with new, raised-panel wooden doors and drawers. The room also gets an energy-efficient wall oven and cooktop, laminate countertops, mid-priced sink and faucet and resilient flooring. Again, the key here is not messing with the footprint in order to conserve costs — no walls or plumbing were moved. The average cost for such a job was about $22,000, with a likely return of 72.8 percent of the cost, the magazine estimated. “It jumped up to fourth place this year, which is nice to see,” he said. “People are getting back to traditional projects, but in a smaller way.”
5. Although the “don’t bother” category — in terms of payback — may be debatable, the project that had the least return, according to the survey, was installing a backup power generator, at an average cost of nearly $15,000. Its payback was about 48 percent, according to the study.
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