Manufactured stone veneer is the third-best remodeling investment in America, and the one nobody posts about.
Nationally, real estate professionals estimate that a $11,702 band of manufactured stone veneer on the front of a house adds $24,328 to a sale price, 207.9% of its cost, according to the Remodeling 2025 Cost vs. Value Report (www.costvsvalue.com). Only the garage door replacement (267.7%) and the steel entry door (216.4%) rank higher, and both are things you buy. The stone band is the first project in the top three that a crew builds.
Count dollars instead of percentages and it leads the report. The estimate puts $12,626 of value above cost on the table, against $7,835 for the garage door and $2,835 for the steel door. The fourth and fifth projects, fiber-cement siding and the minor kitchen remodel, are estimated to add $2,935 and $3,683 above their cost. Every other project in the report is estimated to return less than it costs, so no other line comes close.
Two things make the number worth a closer look. The same project returned 91% in the 2022 report, so the ranking is new. And the cost barely moved while the value estimate jumped, which means the project did not change; the market's read of it did.
What the report actually measured
The project is a band, not a house. The report's specification removes a 300-square-foot continuous strip of vinyl siding from the bottom third of the street-facing facade and replaces it with adhered manufactured stone veneer. It adds 36 linear feet of sills, 40 linear feet of corners, one address block, and an 8-by-10-inch keystone outlining the entry arch. Underneath, it specifies two layers of water-resistive barrier over bare sheathing, corrosion-resistant lath and fasteners, and a half-inch mortar scratch coat.
Those last lines matter more than the stone, and the section on what can go wrong explains why. The stone itself is a minor share of the bill; the rest is demolition, trim, corners, sills, the arch and the moisture assembly. Anyone quoting a full-house wrap is pricing a different, larger project, and that project has no Cost vs. Value number attached to it.
The resale value is not a sale price. The report's publisher asked more than 6,000 Realtors, in a survey run with the National Association of Realtors' RPR platform, what value each of 28 projects adds to the sale price of a home in their market. The 207.9% is what the agents who sell the houses believe buyers will pay. The job cost comes from Verisk's building-cost data, indexed to Bureau of Labor Statistics and Bureau of Economic Analysis prices. So the claim is narrow and worth stating exactly: in 2025, the professionals who price homes for a living believed a 300-square-foot masonry band on the front of a house would come back at twice its cost at closing.
How it got here
For four straight reports, stone veneer lost money on paper. The national pages of the 2019 through 2022 reports put the project at 95%, 96%, 92% and 91% of cost recouped, on a job that rose from $8,907 to $11,066 over those years. Then the estimate moved: 102.3% in the 2023 report, 153% in 2024, when the job cost $11,287 and the value estimate reached $17,291, and 207.9% in 2025.
Since 2019 the job cost is up 31%. The value estimate is up 188%. From 2024 to 2025 alone, the cost rose 3.7% and the value estimate rose 40.7%. A crew installing the same 300 square feet of stone did not get three times better at it. The people pricing homes decided the front of the house is worth more than it was. The report's publisher attributes the exterior premium to real estate professionals valuing curb appeal and to lower labor costs on exterior work, and notes that buyers at higher price points are drawn to well-kept exteriors.
There is a second reading, and the Census Bureau supplies it. Masonry has been disappearing from the street.
Chart: principal exterior wall material of new single-family houses completed, share of all completions, 1973 to 2025, for brick, vinyl siding and fiber cement. Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Characteristics of New Housing (Survey of Construction), retrieved October 2026.
In 1973, 35% of new single-family houses were finished in brick. In 2025 it was 16%. Vinyl siding, first counted in 1992, peaked at 40% of new houses in 2002 and stood at 26% in 2025; fiber cement went from 9% of completions in 2005 to 23%. A buyer in a subdivision built in the last twenty years has mostly seen siding, stucco and fiber cement. Masonry reads as expensive because it has become rare, and the stone band is the cheapest way to put it on the part of the house a listing photo shows. That is our reading of the two datasets side by side, not a finding either publisher states.
Where it varies
The national 207.9% is an average of nine regions, and the five regions the Concrete Masonry and Hardscapes Association has summarized so far all land between 190% and 243%. The West South Central region (Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana) leads at 242.5%, followed by the Pacific at 231.7%, the Middle Atlantic at 200.7% and the South Atlantic at 197.2%. In both Texas's region and the Pacific, stone veneer was the second-highest return of any project in the region.
The East North Central region (Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin) is the lowest of the five published, at 190.6%. That is the number to read if you own in Michigan, and it still out-returns everything in the national top ten except the two doors. The weakest published region for stone veneer beats the best interior project in the country, the minor kitchen remodel at 112.9%, by 78 points. The association did not publish the other four regions; the full report has all nine and 119 individual markets.
What the street looks like
Chart: principal exterior wall material of new single-family houses completed in 2025, share of completions, United States. Stone is counted inside the other category. Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Characteristics of New Housing (Survey of Construction), retrieved October 2026.
In 2025, 84% of new single-family houses were completed with something other than brick on the principal wall: vinyl siding and stucco at 26% each, fiber cement at 23%, wood at 6%. Stone as a principal wall material sits inside the Census Bureau's "other" category, which was 2% of completions. On a street built since 2005, a house with a masonry band on its lower third is the one that looks different from the curb, and the only peer-reviewed study of curb appeal and price, covered in Curb Appeal and Vacancy, found a home's own curb appeal and its neighbor's together explain up to 7% of sale price, more in weak markets.
What can go wrong
Adhered stone veneer is a masonry skin glued to a wood wall, and water is the whole engineering problem. The value estimate assumes the assembly the report specifies: two layers of water-resistive barrier, corrosion-resistant lath fastened into the framing, and a scratch coat. Skip any of them and the facade still photographs well; it just rots the sheathing behind it.
The residential code treats adhered veneer like exterior plaster. Under the International Residential Code's exterior-covering section, as adopted in state codes such as Minnesota's, the wall needs a water-resistive barrier (two layers over wood sheathing), corrosion-resistant self-furring lath with fasteners that reach an inch into wood, flashing applied shingle-fashion at every opening and transition, and a weep screed at the base set at least 4 inches above earth or 2 inches above paving. Local adoption varies, so the inspector's version governs, but those four items appear in every version.
The common failure is at the bottom. Stone set down to the soil or the driveway, with no screed and no clearance, wicks water up behind the veneer and has nowhere to drain. The second is at windows and the garage header, where missing flashing sends water behind the lath. Neither shows for years, and both turn a 207.9% project into a siding tear-off.
The fix costs almost nothing. Ask for the barrier, flashing and weep-screed detail in writing in the bid, and ask to see the lath before the scratch coat goes on. On a $11,702 job those items are a few hundred dollars of material and a day of care, and they are the difference between the estimate and a problem.
What this means for your property
If you are selling in the next two years, do the two doors first, then this. Garage door, steel entry door and the stone band together cost $18,809 and carry an estimated $42,105 at resale, 223.9% combined, if you take the national averages and assume the projects do not overlap. That is the entire street-facing elevation changed for less than a minor kitchen remodel costs.
If you are flipping, stone veneer is step three in The First $7,107, the renovation order built from the 2025 data, and it is the step with the largest dollar gain in the report. Two cautions. The ratios exclude carrying costs, so a $11,702 line with a 207.9% estimate is still $11,702 out of the budget until closing. And the estimate is for 300 square feet on the bottom third of the front; wrapping more of the house spends money the report has never measured.
If you own rentals, this is a resale project, not an income project. No dataset ties a stone facade to faster leasing or higher rent, and the curb-appeal evidence for rentals is inferred from renter photo behavior, not measured. Treat it as sale preparation and schedule it for the year you plan to sell, when the value estimate is the thing you are buying.
If you run a short-term rental, the answer is the same as for every outdoor feature in Outdoor Features for a Short-Term Rental: there is no published study of what a facade does to a nightly rate. If the front of the house is the listing's cover photo, change it and measure rate, occupancy and revenue before and after.
The rule
For a seller or a flipper, the third-ranked project in America is the first one that puts five figures of value on the table. Build the wall behind it properly and the estimate is yours to collect. Build it to the soil and the estimate belongs to the next owner's contractor.
The two doors that precede the stone band are in The $2,435 Door and The 2025 Renovation ROI Rankings. What the claddings that replaced brick are estimated to return is in Windows, Roof, Siding.