Help with Estimating Home Improvement Costs and Payback on Investment
February 22nd, 2008 Categories: First Time Buyers, Home Maintenance, Investing in Real Estate, Mortgages, Economics, Finance, Oakville Real Estate News
Here are two very common questions that homeowners or homebuyers ask me. I wanted to share some websites that have useful information to address these questions:
1) “I am buying a home. How much will it cost to fix/add/renovate X?”
![739101_low[1]](http://www.theoakvillebuzz.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/739101-low1-small.jpg)
Carson Dunlop just released their 2008 estimate of home improvement costs. This is a useful tool when you are looking at a home to buy and want to estimate how much it will cost to repair, improve or renovate something.
Carson Dunlop updates these costs yearly so they provide a useful gauge of current costs, for everything from installing a new furnace, fixing a roof or adding a fireplace.
Click here to access this guide from the Carson Dunlop website, print out and carry with you when house-shopping.
2) “Will I get my money back if I renovate my kitchen/bathroom/or put in a pool?”
A handy tool for estimating payback on home improvement is a renovator calculator provided by AIC, the Appraisal Institute of Canada.
The Appraisal Institute of Canada has developed RENOVA, an interactive web-based guide to the value of home improvements. RENOVA is designed to give consumers a better idea of the return on investment they can expect for a variety of home improvements. It does this by providing a payback value range derived from the cost of the improvement expressed in dollars.
For example, a homeowner might indicate that he or she is considering spending $10,000 on remodeling the kitchen. The calculator will then provide a payback amount of between x and y dollars for that particular renovation. Homeowners can choose from among the 20 most popular renovation improvements, identified by a survey of AIC members.
LOOKING TO SELL THIS SPRING? Now’s the time to consult a REALTOR, call Hilary at 905–599–3311 for expert guidance and advice about the home-selling process.
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This entry was posted on Friday, February 22nd, 2008 at 6:55 am and is filed under First Time Buyers, Home Maintenance, Investing in Real Estate, Mortgages, Economics, Finance, Oakville Real Estate News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.