By Jake Poinier
Home improvement projects run the gamut from whole-home, HGTV-style dream makeovers to less-glamorous tasks such as adding insulation, fixing pipes, or replacing a worn-out roof.
With housing and construction prices up along with inflation, it’s increasingly important to put your hard-earned dollars where they make the most impact on your quality of life — and the least pressure on your wallet.
Wisdom about what to renovate and how much to spend isn’t confined to the realm of your real estate agent. Your local banker also garners plenty of insight from seeing what types of plans people have for their home improvement loans.
“Kitchens and bathrooms are always going to be some of the most popular home enhancement projects,” says María Cedeño, CB&T vice president/area production manager. “Those are areas that really enrich your lifestyle and provide comfort and enjoyment.”
Work-life retreat
Beyond those tried-and-true remodels, some of the other current trends in the market are related to changes such as work-from-home policies and stuck-at-home experiences during the pandemic, both of which forced us all to get more familiar with our living spaces.
“What we’re seeing quite a bit of now is updating homes to include more of an open feel in the interior, especially combining or expanding spaces to the exterior,” Cedeño says.
The most common projects she sees are windows, breezeways or doorways that lead to the outside, along with improvements to the landscape and hardscape of the adjacent backyards or side yards.
“Remember how happy we were to go to a restaurant and get takeout early in the pandemic?” Cedeño continues. “Retreating into a backyard oasis helped us get the feeling of being away when we couldn’t be away, and people enjoyed that enough that it’s still happening.”
Similarly, upgrades to indoor workspaces are a center of attention — and anyone who’s had to spend hours hunched over a laptop at the kitchen table can understand why.
“With a lot of us working from home either full time or part time, there’s a need for better functionality in home offices,” Cedeño says. “In some cases, it’s also a matter of the amount of space overall. We’re seeing many people expanding their homes and adding technology —whether it’s for themselves or for their children needing to do schoolwork.”
Lifestyle vs. ROI
Rising material costs, partly due to a perfect storm of supply-chain issues and heightened demand, have made budgeting an even more vital factor in the renovation equation. Industry studies have found that exterior projects such as new siding, garage doors and windows offer the strongest return on investment. Those types of changes not only offer curb appeal, but they also convey the impression that a home has been well maintained.
Because interior projects tend to be more personalized — and not everyone’s tastes are the same — the payback tends to not be as strong, so a homeowner needs to take more factors into consideration. First and foremost, that includes considering how you use your house and how long you plan to live in it.
“Real estate is a major investment, but it’s also your personal residence,” says Cedeño. “Because of that, your individual comfort, style and financial resources are pretty much competing with any implications as far as the return on investment you hope to get.”
For example, a family that needs another bedroom for a child who moves home or a separate living space for an aging relative may not have an alternative. Likewise, working from home a few days a week removes that hassle of commuting, but it also means you need a comfortable office space where you can be productive.
No matter what improvements you make, the process of remodeling is a matter of striking a balance between enjoying the new space and features vs. the financial aspects. As part of the latter, one of the first steps is to assess what’s happening in your neighborhood — because any trends in size or amenities are what your home is eventually going to be compared to. Keeping renovations to a similar style, scope and price range can help avoid regrets down the line.
“When it comes time to sell, it doesn’t matter what’s going on in the magazines or on TV, and it doesn’t matter what’s going on two or three miles away,” says Cedeño. “The focus should be on your immediate area.”
Striking a balance
Even the risks of too much customization or over-improvement need to be balanced with the family’s needs and aspirations. A movie buff might want an over-the-top home theater, a foodie needs commercial-grade kitchen appliances, and, after all, it’s only prudent for a car collector to have a six-bay garage to protect their investments.
An upscale master-suite addition ranks at the top in job cost ($320,976) and at the bottom in cost-recovery percentage (48%) in Zonda’s annual Cost vs. Value report, but it might represent a huge step up in quality of life.
“Sometimes, making highly customized improvements won’t give you back a dollar-for-dollar return on investment in the event of a sale. But you may decide to do it anyway if it’s a dream project or if it improves your lifestyle,” says Cedeño. “As long as you go into it with that mindset, it’s really just a personal decision.”
If you are planning to sell in the near or mid-future, it will affect your strategy on whatever remodeling changes you want to make.
“You’re probably going to want to stay more in the range of neutral changes as far as colors, materials, and design,” Cedeño says. “Success in selling a home is about presenting a clean canvas, where a buyer can imagine introducing their own furnishings into a wide-open space, personalizing it, and giving it their own style.”