Every year, Zonda asks real estate professionals in 119 U.S. markets one question about 28 common remodeling projects: if this house sold today, how much of the project's cost would the buyer pay back? Job costs come from Verisk's XactRemodel estimating data. Value estimates come from the people who price houses for a living.
For the second year running, the answer is a garage door.
A midrange garage door replacement costs $4,672 nationally and adds an estimated $12,507 to the sale price, according to the Remodeling 2025 Cost vs. Value Report (www.costvsvalue.com), now in its 38th edition. That is 267.7% of the cost recouped: the project makes money at closing instead of losing it.
Now compare it to the project most homeowners start with. A midrange major kitchen remodel costs $82,793 and adds $42,130. That is 50.9% recouped. Spend $82,793, give up $40,663 of it at closing.
The 2025 top ten
The full ranking, with every project's job cost, resale value and percentage recouped, is free to download at www.costvsvalue.com. The report's re-use guidelines allow us to quote it in narrative form only, so this article describes the pattern and leaves the tables to the publisher.
Eight of the ten highest-returning projects in the 2025 ranking are things a buyer sees from the curb: the garage door, the front door, stone veneer, siding, decks and a grand entrance. The ninth, a standby generator, sits outside too, but a buyer doesn't see it from the street. The only project inside the house is a minor kitchen remodel, and "minor" is the operative word: $28,458 for new cabinet fronts, counters, appliances and flooring, with 112.9% recouped. Not a gut.
Seven of the ten cost less than $20,000. Five return more than they cost: four exterior projects and the minor kitchen.
Why the outside wins
Three reasons show up consistently across 38 years of this data.
1. Cost relative to what changes. The garage door is usually the largest single object on the front of a house. Nothing else at $4,672 changes that much of what a buyer sees. The same logic holds for the steel entry door at $2,435: small check, large share of the first impression.
2. Buyers price the house before they open the door. This has been measured. Johnson, Tidwell and Villupuram (2020), writing in the Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, ran Google Street View images through a deep-learning classifier and matched them to sale prices. A property's own curb appeal was worth about twice its across-the-street neighbor's, and together they accounted for up to 7% of the sale price. The premium was larger during weak housing markets. Every project in the top ten except the kitchen improves the picture a buyer sees first.
3. Replacement is not taste. A buyer may hate your cabinet color. Nobody hates new fiber-cement siding. Kitchens and baths carry taste risk: the buyer mentally re-does them and discounts the offer. A new steel door, new siding or a new deck carries none of that risk, so the value estimate holds.
The joy-versus-money gap
NAR and NARI publish the other half of the picture in the 2025 Remodeling Impact Report. Homeowners rate finished projects on a Joy Score out of 10. Kitchen upgrades, new roofing and primary-suite additions all score a perfect 10. NAR's cost-recovery estimates for two of them: kitchen upgrade 60%, new primary suite 54%. Meanwhile, a new steel front door, the least glamorous line in the report, recovers 100%.
Two reports, two methods, same shape: the projects owners love most are the projects buyers pay least for. That is not an argument against remodeling your kitchen. It is an argument for knowing which of the two you are buying, joy or resale, before you write the check.
A caveat on the numbers
The Cost vs. Value Report's figures are national averages of estimates by real estate professionals. They are not measured sale outcomes, and regional spread is wide. The backup generator, 95.3% nationally, recoups roughly 139% in the East South Central region and 69% in the West North Central. Your market's number is the one that matters; the ranking is where to start looking, not where to stop.
The cost side is moving too. Producer prices for the goods that go into residential construction were 53% higher in August 2026 than in January 2020, and construction workers' average hourly earnings were 34% higher in September, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Every ratio in the report is a resale estimate divided by a job cost, so when costs move this much, the ranking is worth re-reading each edition rather than remembering.
Chart: producer prices for goods used in residential construction (the PPI for inputs to residential construction) and average hourly earnings of construction employees, indexed to January 2020 = 100, monthly, 2015 to 2026. Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Producer Price Index and Current Employment Statistics, retrieved October 2026.
What to do with this, by situation
Selling in the next 24 months. Work from the outside in. Garage door, entry door, then siding or stone if yours is tired, then a minor kitchen refresh. Stop before the gut remodel. In NAR's survey, 18% of remodeling homeowners were preparing to sell within two years. This list is for them.
Staying five or more years. Buy joy. NAR's typical Joy Score across projects is 8.2, and that is a real return on a house you live in. Just don't tell yourself the $82,793 kitchen is an investment. At 50.9%, it is consumption with a partial refund.
Not sure yet. The minor kitchen remodel is the one project that is both: 112.9% recouped and a daily quality-of-life upgrade.
The rule
If you can see it from the street, it pays. If you can only see it from the kitchen table, you are paying for it.
Own a rental? Read Curb Appeal and Vacancy: What the Numbers Actually Show. Flipping? Read The Kitchen Trap. Every article on Raise The Value is tagged by property type so you only read what applies to you.