How to increase your home price comes down to one decision: pick renovations that return more at resale than they cost to build, and do them in the right order. Finishes matter less than most owners think. Layout, square footage, and the condition of the kitchen and bathrooms move the appraisal more than the paint colour.
The short answer
Renovations ranked by resale return
These are the recoup rates we use in our home value calculator. Recoup rate is the share of the project cost you get back in added resale value. A 70% recoup on a $50,000 kitchen adds about $35,000 to the home.
Recoup varies by market, the home’s current condition, and the finish level. These rates reflect typical returns across our Southwestern Ontario and GTA service area.
Order of operations
Where to start
Fix what fails an inspection first. A buyer discounts hard for a roof, a panel, or a foundation issue, and those repairs return little on their own. Once the home is sound, the kitchen is almost always the highest-return room, followed by adding usable square footage through a finished basement or an addition. Bathrooms come next. Cosmetic work, paint, flooring, and fixtures, is the last step, not the first.
Second opinion
Where we agree and disagree with Reddit
The standard Reddit advice on raising home value, in threads like r/homeowners: “Home renovations that add value to the home”, is consistent: paint and curb appeal first because they are cheap, kitchens and bathrooms sell houses, and do not over-improve past what your street supports. All three hold up, and the last one is the advice most owners actually need to hear.
Where the usual thread answer falls short is that it ranks projects by cheapness instead of by return. Paint is cheap but adds little in absolute dollars. If the goal is a materially higher appraisal, square footage and the kitchen move the number, which is why they sit at the top of our table even though they cost the most to build. Instead of averaging thread opinions, put your own address through our home value calculator and compare projects in dollars.
Model your home
Put real numbers on it
Our free calculator applies these recoup rates to your home. Set your current value, add the renovations you are weighing, and it shows the projected new value. You can stack several projects to see the combined effect.
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The math behind the numbers
Want to run the figures yourself? How to calculate the home price increase from a renovation walks through the formula and a worked example.