Not Profiting on Home Improvement

WalletPop’s Zac Bissonnette has a great post on what a poor investment home remodeling is. Every year the folks at Remodeling Magazine (yes, really) publish a survey of the impact on a house’s value of various types of home improvements. Helpfully, they do this as a percent of what was spent, so if you blew $20,000 on a new bathroom that only increased the value of your house by $15,000, then that’s a score of 75%.

The survey breaks out 19 types of projects, across nine regions. Most of the recoup values are in the 60%-80% range. The best from this year seems to be the 97% of your money you get to keep if you are adding a wooden deck onto a midrage house on the Pacific Coast. As far as I know, the survey has never found a value over 100%.

To be fair, this does not quite mean that all home improvements are money losers. These are averages, so almost half of those West Coast decks actually did add value. And the survey only covers relatively large projects, the kind for which you would hire a contractor. If you ask a good real estate agent how to make your house more valuable he will suggest cosmetic improvements, e.g. a new paint job. I am guessing that those sorts of fixes really do turn a profit.

But the basic observation, that home remodeling is a terrible investment, still holds. In a more perfect world, this would be so obvious that nobody would bother to mention it. Buying something at retail and hoping to sell it used at a profit, essentially what we are talking about here, is rarely a winning strategy.

But as Bissonnette points out, there is an entire category of cable TV shows based on the premise that you can make money remodeling. How can it be that home experts on responsible networks can advocate something so contrary to reality?

Because these are only TV shows. The people who make and broadcast TV shows are successful if people watch the shows, not if the shows are factually correct. And people want to see video of gleaming new kitchens and hear what a great investment they are. Ending a show saying “And Bob and Sue’s new sun room only vaporized $10,000 of their net worth.” would not help ratings.

Which brings up an important point about personal finance advice. We all make an unspoken assumption that successful givers of advice must give good advice, otherwise people would stop listening. This is not (quite) true. Popular givers of advice tend to get that way because they say what their audience wants to hear and wants to believe is true. People want to believe that they can become millionaires relatively easily by skipping the lattes or that they can work only four hours a week. That doesn’t mean it’s true.

Housing, Investing | Frank Curmudgeon | January 20, 2009 9:28 am

305 Comments

By Rebecca Behrens, March 10, 2011 @ 8:53 pm

I agree with your view; I have never remodeled or painted, etc., without realizing that the cost would be at the expense of my necessity, pleasure or convenience.
By Marsha Killington, Colonial Heights VA, May 14, 2011 @ 4:44 pm

Houses are Money Pits. Beginning, Middle, and End of the Story.

Not until every single person agrees with this will they stand a chance of being decent ‘investments’ again.
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By Wahidi, January 18, 2012 @ 1:15 pm

I agree with you that not ever home remodeling or home improvement will add value to your home. However you have to stay frugal when making choices to remodel your home and pick the right places to remodel. This is a great post and informative.
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I disagree completely.
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By jay, March 31, 2012 @ 1:17 am

It is always crucial to decide on what areas of the home to remodel…not all areas of the home will increase the value… Great post
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