The Remodeling Magazine Cost vs Value Report is one of the most respected and valued reports to my business, and most importantly for my clients. If you are debating or even beginning the process, give some time to evaluate this report. It will help you understand the average costs for your region, and most importantly what your return will be. The studies behind this report are nationwide, so it is valuable to a vast audience. While I study this yearly report for kitchen and bathroom projects, it also reports on several other remodeling projects, including room additions, siding, roof and window replacements, etc. You can also view housing, economic, and social characteristics of cities/regions abroad.
Here is an exert from the report for the Atlanta area only. Visit the link below to view elaborated details on Atlanta, other regions – even comparisons to the overall National averages.
Job Cost %Cost Recouped Project
South Atlantic — Mid range
$14,510 75.5% Bathroom Remodel
$53,236 79.1% Major Kitchen Remodel
$20,320 79.9% Minor Kitchen RemodelSouth Atlantic — Upscale
$47,615 72.2% Bathroom Remodel
$106,506 73.3% Major Kitchen Remodel
Full Report: The results of the 2008–09 Cost vs. Value Report are surprising. A sluggish real estate market, and an increasing number of foreclosures while our survey was in the field this summer, led us to expect that the ratio of a remodeling project’s cost to the value it retains at resale would drop substantially more than the 8.02% (6.1 points) decline experienced in 2007.
What the 2008–09 data show, however, is a slowdown in the decline of the average cost-value ratio across all projects to only 3.86%, just 2.7 points down from 2007 (see “Percentage Recouped at Resale” graph).
Even with a mild (2.67%) increase in 2007 construction costs, it seems likely that if house values were plummeting as far and as fast as media reports would have us believe, the Cost vs. Value results should have been much worse. Instead, these results suggest that instances of steep home-value depreciation occurring in some parts of the country, particularly those… read more
By: Sal Alfano
