5. Lifestyle Home Improvement Projects
Lifestyle Projects are single purpose remodeling projects important to the homeowner, but not to the real estate market and include projects that may be characterized as “gilding the lilly” and overbuilding. These fare the worst from an ROI standpoint and some projects may even be considered a liability to a prospective buyer.
For example, let’s say your daughter is a competitive swimmer and you build an indoor training pool. No one is really going to care about that yet it cost a lot of money. The next owner may actually tear it out. Some projects like this are done because they are important to the home owner only. You need to understand that with these types of projects you won’t be recouping much if any return on it.
When it comes to determining how luxurious a project should be, again be careful the project is not overbuilt. Doing much beyond the neighborhood norm ventures into a Lifestyle Project and will limit your return on investment (ROI). For example, although a Kitchen remodel is an excellent project yielding high returns, if you have granite counters in a neighborhood market that does not support that quality of material, you won’t get the additional value, and that would be considered too luxurious. However, if your neighborhood has all kitchens with granite or similar counter tops, then that’s not considered luxurious and would be appropriate.
Classic examples of Lifestyle projects include:
