Home Remodeling Costs vs. Property Value Increase

Part of my role when I was doing the show for HGTV was to provide the prospective homeowners with my thoughts on which remodeling projects would have the most benefits when it came time to re-sell their home.

As a real estate agent who sees many homes for sale, many remodeling projects and hears constantly what buyers want and what they don't want, I feel I have a good instinct for this kind of thing.

But it always helps to have numbers to back you up.

In preparing for the show, I used a great report put out by Remodeling Magazine. The report shows the average costs of various remodeling projects in various regions and cities throughout the country. It also reports what percentage of the remodeling cost people generally get back when they go to sell, also broken down by regions and even cities.

During the housing boom, this was great information to know because almost everybody wanted to buy a fixer-upper, put in the time and money and re-sell. But even though fewer people are buying fixer uppers these days, it's still important information to know.

If you must sell your property in this market, you really do want to fix it up, if you can afford to. Buyers these days don't want to buy properties needing a lot of work. Fewer can afford to pay for repairs. Banks are less likely to loan money for repairs. The loan that many used to fix up their home -- the Home Equity Line of Credit -- is all but forgotten in this market. So if you want to sell, you have to fix up. Problem is, you'll get less for your effort and expense.

And that makes a report like the Remodeling magazine Cost vs. Value report even more valuable.

You can get the national or regional information at the Remodeling magazine website, or you can give the company a little information about yourself and download city specific information. Here's the link for: Los Angeles Remodeling Information.