Short-term rental advice is full of numbers about amenities and nightly rates. Almost none of them come from a source you can check. So this article does something different: it uses only the outdoor-feature data that has been published with a method attached, says clearly where that data stops, and gives you a way to fill the gap with your own listing.

What the outdoor features cost and recover

Two reports price outdoor projects.

NAR and the National Association of Landscape Professionals surveyed 2,620 Realtors and 160 landscape firms in early 2023. In their estimates, a standard lawn care service costs $415 and recovers 217% of that at resale; landscape maintenance costs $4,800 and recovers 104%; an overall landscape upgrade costs $9,000 and recovers 100%; an outdoor kitchen costs $15,000 and recovers 100%. The showpieces recover far less: landscape lighting costs $6,800 and recovers 59%, a fire feature costs $9,000 and recovers 56%, and an in-ground pool costs $90,000 and recovers 56%. NAR/NALP costs are NALP member estimates and recovery figures are Realtor estimates. The same report also priced a new patio at $10,500, a wood deck at $16,900, tree care at $2,875 and an irrigation system at $6,000; their recovery figures are not reproduced here because we could not verify them against the primary release.

The other report covers decks and a patio. A wood deck addition costs $18,263 nationally and recoups an estimated 94.9% at resale, a composite deck addition costs $25,096 and recoups 88.5%, and an upscale backyard patio costs $51,454 and recoups 46.0%, according to the Remodeling 2025 Cost vs. Value Report (www.costvsvalue.com), which uses Verisk XactRemodel job costs and resale estimates from real estate professionals in 119 markets.

Two things stand out. The cheap, maintenance-type work recovers everything and more. The showpieces (pool, fire feature, lighting, the upscale patio) recover about half. For a host, that is the exit math: it is what you get back if you sell the property with the feature in place.

What guests and buyers say they want

Recovery is a seller's number. Hosts also need the demand side, and there is real data on what people say they want outdoors, from buyers and renters rather than guests, which is a limitation worth stating up front.

  • NAHB's 2024 What Home Buyers Really Want survey of more than 3,000 buyers rated a patio essential or desirable for 86%, tied for first on the entire list, with exterior lighting at 82%, a front porch at 81% and landscaping at 80% (NAHB, Economics & Housing Policy Group, "Outdoor Features & a Laundry Room Among Most Wanted Features", Eye On Housing, April 3, 2024).
  • Zillow's 2025 renter survey found 56% of recent renters rated private outdoor space as important, 50% called listing photos essential, and 22% signed a lease without an in-person tour.
  • NAR's own respondents gave every one of the 11 outdoor projects a Joy Score of 9 or higher; the pool and landscape lighting scored 10, the patio 9.9.

Builders act as if the want list is right. Of new single-family homes completed in 2025, 66% had a porch, 62% a patio and 17% a deck, according to the Census Bureau's Survey of Construction. Patios have gained since 2010, when 46% of new homes had one, and decks have lost ground, from 25%.

Line chart: share of new single-family homes completed with a porch rose from 63% in 2010 to 66% in 2025, with a patio from 46% to 62%, and with a deck fell from 25% to 17%.

Chart: share of new single-family houses completed with a porch, a patio or a deck, alone or with other features, 2010 to 2025. Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Characteristics of New Housing, Survey of Construction, retrieved October 2026.

The mechanism for a short-term rental is the renter mechanism at higher speed: the guest chooses from a thumbnail, never visits before booking, and rates the stay on how it felt. Outdoor space is the feature people say they want and the one that photographs. That is a sound reason to invest in it. It is not a nightly-rate figure, and we will not pretend it is.

What no dataset will tell you

There is no published, methodologically documented study of what a fire pit, hot tub, deck or pool does to a short-term rental's average nightly rate or occupancy that we were able to verify against a primary source. Figures circulating online ("a hot tub adds 15%" and the like) trace back to platform marketing or secondary summaries without stated samples or methods. They may be right. They are not evidence.

So measure it yourself. It takes one spreadsheet:

  1. Record your listing's nightly rate, occupancy and monthly revenue for the twelve months before the feature, by month.
  2. Add the feature. Re-shoot the listing so the feature is the first or second photo.
  3. Record the same three numbers for the twelve months after, by month.
  4. Compare each month to the same month the year before, not to the month before; seasonality will otherwise fool you.
  5. Payback in years = feature cost ÷ the annual revenue difference.

That comparison is not a controlled study either, since the market moves between years, but it is your own data on your own listing, which beats a number from a stranger's blog.

What to do with this, by situation

Listing already live, budget under $10,000. The three projects that recover 100% or more at resale are also the three cheapest: lawn service, landscape maintenance, and a landscape upgrade. Do those, re-shoot in daylight, and move the exterior to photo one. Then start the spreadsheet.

Adding a showpiece. A fire feature at $9,000 is the least expensive of the showpieces and NAR's respondents gave it a Joy Score above 9. Expect roughly half back at resale, and let your own before-and-after decide whether it earned its keep on the nightly rate.

Considering a pool. $90,000 in, 56% back at resale, and everything else (insurance, liability, maintenance, local rules for rentals) is outside every dataset here. That is a decision for your numbers and your insurer, not for a national average.

The rule

Outdoor space is what people say they want and what the thumbnail shows. Spend on the cheap, maintainable version first, photograph it, and measure the rest on your own listing, because nobody else has.

How a listing photo drives demand is in Curb Appeal and Vacancy. What Realtors recommend outdoors before a sale is in Before You List.