Renovating your home can be both super-exciting and super-stressful. The saying “the couple that renovates together stays together” exists for a reason! But beyond enhancing your enjoyment of the home you live in, renovating can also add value to its sale price, when it comes time to move. Not all renovations are created equally when it comes to the ROI, however. Here are five of the ones that give you the biggest bang for your buck.
Quick note before we dive in: these figures depend largely on the state of your home before renovations. For example, if you re-paint a house that already looks crisp and clean just because you don’t like the colour, you won’t get the same return as if you re-painted an old, outdated home that was cracking at the seams and used puke-green as the main colour for its rooms.
Top-Returning Renovation: Flooring
If you’ve got carpet throughout your home, stripping it out and replacing it with hardwood or laminate flooring can actually generate an above-100% return on investment. It’s the only item on this list to be able to claim that, and for good reason.
Carpets tend to hang on to a lot of things: pet hair, dead skin cells, cigarette smoke and other smells… you may be fine with these things, but your prospective buyers definitely won’t be. Most people want to buy a fresh, ready-to-go home, which is why getting rid of your carpet and replacing it with hard surfaces is one of the highest-returning renovations you can undertake.
Estimated ROI: 100-150%, depending on the materials and quality of installation
High-Returning Reno #2: Kitchen
Your kitchen is the heart and soul of your home. It’s where people naturally congregate, and is one of the rooms that is both most visible and gets the most usage. Is it any surprise then, that it’s one of the things that prospective buyers pay the most attention to?
If your kitchen is outdated and in need of a renovation, replacing the cabinets, counters and backsplash can have a massive impact, while also generating one of the highest ROIs on this list.
Estimated ROI: 75-100%
High-Returning Reno #3: Fresh Paint
Coming back to that puke-green colour… if the paint theme of your home leaves something to be desired, or it’s just cracking, chipping and nearing the end of its life, giving your home a fresh coat of paint is a great way to add a ton of visual appeal for very little cost. If you’re hiring professionals, your return will be less than if you do it yourself… but the key is a quality, clean job. No drips, no uneven lines.
This honestly isn’t that hard to achieve yourself though; I was able to paint our entire house before we moved, and the end result looked fantastic. The only tricky areas were the stairwells!
Estimated ROI (hire the pros): 60-75%
Estimated ROI (do-it-yourself): 150-200%+ – as long as it looks professional and you chose neutral colours!
High-Returning Reno #4: New Windows/Roof
Windows and roofing counts as part of the “bones” of your house. While you won’t get a ton of enjoyment out of updating these, you may get a ton of energy savings and/or prevent future leaks in your home, which prospective homeowners will appreciate. Because of this, windows and roofing renovations tend to both have similarly-high ROI.
Because both renovations are long-lived, you’ll also be able to benefit from potential energy savings for as long as you live in the home. These are two that you shouldn’t put off if you can afford to do them now!
Estimated ROI: 75%
High-Returning Reno #5: Finish the Basement
If your unfinished basement looks like it could be used as the set of a horror movie, then renovating and finishing it might be a worthwhile exercise for you. You’ll dramatically expand the amount of livable, usable space in your home, and significantly increase its value in the process.
You may be able to exceed this ROI if you have a separate entrance to the basement in your home, and enough space to transform the basement into a legal rental. Homes that office this type of arrangement can sometimes fetch more on the market than ones that don’t, depending on where you live!
Estimated ROI: 75%
Wrapping it Up
Remember: unless you’re a professional house-flipper, renovating your home isn’t just about dollars and cents. You’ll also get to enjoy the renovations right up until you’re ready to sell, so don’t lose your mind just because everything isn’t over 100% ROI in this list. You can’t put a price on having a home that you love coming home to (or working out of) at the end of a long day!
