Which Home Improvements Pay Off?
When remodeling your kitchen for resale,
steer clear of highly personalized looks and outrageous color schemes. Instead,
stick with traditional materials and appliances, like all-wood cabinets,
commercial-look appliances, natural wood or stone floors, and stone countertops.
Kitchens and Baths
In the hottest housing markets, springing for a kitchen or bath remodel is a
sure-fire investment, often returning more than 100 percent of the cost. In
Baltimore, for instance, a $9400 bathroom remodel recouped 182 percent of its
cost at resale, according to Remodeling’s 2004 study. The markets in Washington,
D.C., Minneapolis, Chicago, Atlanta, San Francisco and San Diego also offered
triple-digit returns on a bathroom remodel. Minor kitchen remodels (average
cost: $15,273) also provided returns of more than 100 percent in cities
including Providence, R.I., Miami, New Orleans and, of course, San Diego, where
a $17,928 investment netted $27,000 on resale.
Kitchens and baths are the areas in a home "where you can tell
if money has been well spent or not," says architect Steve Straughan, a partner
in L.A.-based KAA Design Group. "They’re the most expensive areas of the home in
terms of construction. And they’re where people spend time in their homes."
So exactly what should you improve when you redo your kitchen or
bathroom? Think traditional: all-wood cabinets, commercial-look appliances,
natural wood or stone floors, and stone countertops. Walk-in showers have
replaced whirlpool tubs as the must-have cleaning machine in bathrooms,
Straughan says. His clients will "forgo the tub to have a big walk-in shower" if
they don’t have room for both. "Most people don’t have time to take a bath,"
Straughan points out. "So a lot of time you’re giving away all that square
footage for a tub that rarely gets used." Floor-to-ceiling steam showers are
also hot (so to speak).
