If you're considering the long-term possibility of selling your house, you've probably considered a home improvement project to increase its value.
To assist your decision making in the process, Remodeling released their 2015 "Cost vs. Value" study. The study compares the cost of specific jobs one can perform on a home to the value it produces for resale in the eyes of realtors. For more on the methodology behind the study, click here.
Overall, the trend over the past several years has been that cost is increasing while value, despite an uptick in 2014, is decreasing. Currently, the average cost of a project is around $43,000, while the average value of that project is around $27,000. That leads to a cost-value ratio of about 62 percent.
Those numbers are available for several large metro areas in the U.S. also, as the report measured similar data in specific cities. In Philadelphia, the project for the highest cost-value ratio is an entry door replacement. In fact, it's the only project in the study that got more average value than cost, averaging a cost of $3,128 and getting a value of $3,370, with a cost-value ratio of about 107 percent.
The worst project in Philadelphia from the study, in terms of bang for your buck, was a sunroom addition. Costing around $85,000 while only getting an average value of about $35,000, it produced a cost-value ratio of about 43 percent.
For more numbers in Philadelphia from the study, click here. For Allentown, Harrisburg, and other Middle-Atlantic cities, click here.