What’s the Return on Home Improvement Changes?

With tax season right around the corner, we felt it was beneficial to help describe the benefit of doing home improvement changes to the exterior of your home. Not only is there a benefit from a cosmetic aspect – generating more of a curb appeal for your home or generating a higher amount of drive by looky-loos – but it can actually increase your overall return once you sell your home.

There’s a magazine (Remodeling Magazine) that puts on an ROI report each year on cost vs value and we want to take a closer look at certain products to understand their value. Instead of looking just at Denver or a specific city, we wanted to look at this at the state level. However, this report only breaks down at a national level, regional level, or city wide level. To analyze this, we’re looking regionally with the following cities included:

• Colorado: Denver, Fort Collins, Colorado Springs, and Boulder
• Utah: Salt Lake City, Ogden, and Provo
• Arizona: Phoenix and Tucson
• Nevada: Las Vegas
• Idaho: Boise
• New Mexico: Albuquerque

Vinyl Window Replacement:

• The National average cost for Vinyl Window replacement comes in at $16,802 and our Region is slightly less at $16,340.
• The average Resale Value increases the home value at the National level a total of $12,332, and a Regional increases at $11,644.

Now, the average job size seems rather large here as most of the jobs we’ve seen come through Colorado range around $7,000. The biggest takeaway is to understand the percentage of return instead of the dollar figure.

• The cost recouped is defined as the difference between what someone spent, and what someone received back once they sold the house. The National Cost Recouped value is at 73.4% of the value, where Regionally we saw a 71.3% return.

Wood Window Replacement:

• The National Average cost for wood window replacement comes in Nationally at $20,526 and Regionally at $20,026
• The average Resale Value increases the home value at $14,530 Nationally and $13,422 regionally
• The cost recouped comes in Nationally at 70.8% compared to the Regionally at 67.0%

Siding Replacement:

Historically, this report would break down the difference between Vinyl siding and other siding options, but for this year they’ve lumped it all together and analyzed all siding variations.

• The National average cost for siding replacement comes in at $16,036, and our Region comes in at $15,317
• The average Resale Value increases the home value at the National level $12,119, and Regionally it increase the home value at $11,545.
• The cost recouped at the National level comes in at 75.6% and Regionally we see a 75.4% increase – almost right in line with each other.

Manufactured Stone Veneer:

• At the National level, the average cost for an asphalt roof replacement is $8,907 compared Regionally at $8,731
• Nationally, the average Resale Value increases the home value by $8,449 compared Regionally at $8,422
• The cost recouped Nationally comes in at a whopping 94.9% compared Regionally at an even higher 96.5%

Metal Roof Replacement:

• Nationally, the average cost of a metal roof replacement comes in at $38,600, compared to the Regional average of only $36,577
• The average Resale Value increases the home value Nationally by $23,526, compared Regionally at $21,965
• The cost recouped Nationally comes in at 60.9% and Regionally at 60.1%

Asphalt Roof Replacement:

• At the National level, the average cost for an asphalt roof replacement is $22,636 compared Regionally at $21,614
• Nationally, the average Resale Value increases the home value by $15,427 compared Regionally at $14,171
• The cost recouped Nationally comes in at 68.2% compared Regionally at 65.6%

So what does this mean? If you’re looking to make an improvement on your home – take note of the amount of value you recoup after you sell your home. In many cases, our Regional is slightly below the National average, but it should still show that you can recoup a good amount of that value back regardless of the trade you’re looking at. Just because the price tag may be pretty significant when you’re talking about replacing a metal roof, the return is almost 60% of your input. Better yet, this seems to be improving year after year, and each category (except Metal Roof Replacement) have increased year-over-year.

If you want to look at further projects, check out the article here.