It was a common story last year: faced with summer, fall, and most likely winter of spending time at home, many families opted to buy into some of the luxury outdoor amenities that they wouldn’t have considered before the COVID-19 pandemic.
The good news is that those features like backyard oasis continue to have used in a post-vaccine-rollout world, and buyers seem to continue to be interested in them. While you most likely are still using your backyard oasis and gaining value from the investment that way, you may also wonder what kind of premium your home might fetch because of those features now – here are some of the average returns that HomeLight’s real estate agent insights survey revealed.
Value Of Your Backyard Oasis
The Kind Of Hot Tub Does Matter
If you opted for a hot tub in your backyard oasis, keep in mind that the kind you got really matters! For instance, installing an inground hot tub probably cost a pretty penny, $8,000-$25,000 on average, while freestanding hot tubs only cost an average of $2,500. The return on the investment, in either case, has gone up, but in different ways.
Home buyers are willing to pay more like $6,925 more for a house with an inground hot tub than one without, up from $4,052 before the pandemic. With freestanding hot tubs, however, they technically aren’t included in the house: you have to instead arrange to sell them separately to the buyer and leave them with them. Even so, the amount home buyers are willing to pay seems to have grown from an average of $1,202 to $1,999, helping you really recoup those costs.
Decks And Outdoor Kitchens Have Grown In Value
Many people pre-COVID would be surprised to find a full kitchen with storage, seating, counter space, and a gourmet grill outside a house they were considering buying. Some of them even have hammocks in their backyards to chill after having a meal!
However, with the outdoors being one of the safest places to have dinner guests this past year, these features have become very common and very popular home additions. These kitchens vary in cost quite a bit but having a substantial one used to raise a home’s value a little over $6,000. Buyers have discovered a new love for outdoor cooking and dining, which seems to have raised the value of these outdoor kitchens to somewhere like $9,751. That’s a big jump!
Decks and patios are also great additions for making outdoor entertaining comfortable and easy. You can enjoy the breeze without having to be out in the yard itself. Even with shortages of labor and lumber price increases, many people will make some of their money back as decks now add about $7,000 to the value of a home, and many decks cost that much or less.
If you’ve made home improvements before, you know that any ROI from selling the home should be treated as the icing on the cake. It’s valuable to always consider what you can actually afford, not assuming you’ll find a buyer who is very interested in those updates. The real benefit of most luxury updates to your home or landscape should be seen as an investment in your family’s happiness or your own ability to relax and enjoy your space. The rise in value for these upgrades is not a bad piece of news though!
