Every few years the National Association of Home Builders asks thousands of recent and prospective buyers to rate home features as essential, desirable, indifferent or unwanted. The 2024 edition surveyed more than 3,000 of them. The top of the list is remarkably consistent from one edition to the next, and it is not what renovation media would predict.
Wanting a feature and paying extra for it are different things. So this article puts the NAHB "want" list next to the resale-recovery data from the two remodeling-value reports, and is honest about the features that have never been priced at all.
The want list
In NAHB's 2024 edition, a laundry room and a patio tie for first: 86% of buyers rated each essential or desirable. Eleven more features drew 80% or better, and the thirteen together are the want list this article works from. (Source: NAHB, Economics & Housing Policy Group, "Outdoor Features & a Laundry Room Among Most Wanted Features", Eye On Housing, April 3, 2024; national survey of 3,000+ recent and prospective home buyers.)
Chart: share of recent and prospective home buyers rating each feature essential or desirable, What Home Buyers Really Want, 2024 edition. Source: NAHB, Economics & Housing Policy Group, Outdoor Features & a Laundry Room Among Most Wanted Features, Eye On Housing, April 3, 2024.
Two more findings from the same survey frame everything below. Security cameras are now wanted by 76% of buyers, 36 points higher than a decade earlier, and the size of the home buyers say they want has shrunk: 2,067 square feet in 2023, down from 2,260 in 2003 (NAHB, Economics & Housing Policy Group, "NAHB Releases What Home Buyers Really Want, Study Shows Buyers Want Smaller Homes", Eye On Housing, March 20, 2024). Buyers are asking for better, not bigger.
Builders have followed. The median new single-family home completed in the United States peaked at 2,467 square feet in 2015 and was 2,142 square feet in 2025, 325 square feet smaller, according to the Census Bureau's Survey of Construction.
Chart: median size of new single-family houses completed, United States, square feet, 1973 to 2025. Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Characteristics of New Housing, Survey of Construction, retrieved October 2026.
Group one: wanted, and buyers pay for it
Where a wanted feature matches a priced project, the data lines up well.
- Landscaping (80% want). NAR and the National Association of Landscape Professionals estimated an overall landscape upgrade at $9,000 with 100% recovered at resale, and landscape maintenance at $4,800 with 104%. Wanted, cheap, and paid back.
- ENERGY STAR windows (83% want). A vinyl window replacement costs $22,073 nationally and recovers an estimated 75.5% at resale, according to the Remodeling 2025 Cost vs. Value Report (www.costvsvalue.com); NAR's 2025 Realtor survey puts vinyl windows at 74%. Not fully paid back, but it is replacement work, and three-quarters is what a buyer pays for not having to do it themselves.
Group two: wanted, but not paid for at the price people build it
- Patio (86% want). Tied for the most-wanted feature in America. The Cost vs. Value Report's backyard patio, an upscale scope at $51,454, recovers 46.0%. NAR/NALP priced a new patio at $10,500 and its respondents gave it a Joy Score of 9.9. The gap between those two costs is the lesson: buyers want a patio. They do not pay for a $51,000 one.
- Exterior lighting (82% want). NAR/NALP's landscape lighting: $6,800, 59% recovered, Joy Score 10.
- Full bath on the main level (80% want). Adding a bathroom is a big project: the Cost vs. Value Report's midrange bathroom addition is $60,645 and recovers 53.3%; NAR's 2025 survey puts adding a new bathroom at 56%. Wanted by four buyers in five, paid back at about half.
The pattern in this group is not that buyers are wrong about what they want. It is that "want" is binary and price is not. A feature can be a requirement for the house to make the shortlist and still not command a premium once it is there.
Group three: wanted, and nobody has measured it
This is the group renovation advice usually fills with invented numbers. We will not.
Laundry rooms, walk-in pantries, hardwood on the main level, ceiling fans, garage storage, eat-in kitchen space, a front porch and security cameras all rank at or near the top of what buyers say they want. None of them appears in the Cost vs. Value Report's 28 projects or in NAR's cost-recovery tables, so there is no verified figure for what any of them returns at resale. (The closest item to a porch in the Cost vs. Value Report is a fiberglass grand entrance, a door and sidelights rather than a porch.)
What the want data does support: if a house is missing one of these and it can be added cheaply (a shelf-and-rod pantry, ceiling fans, garage shelving, a camera doorbell), the feature is more likely to help the house make a buyer's shortlist. What it does not support is any specific dollar return. If someone gives you one, ask for the study.
What to do with this, by situation
Selling in the next year. Cover group one and the cheap end of group three: landscape, lighting where it is dark, fans, storage, a working pantry. Do not build the $51,000 patio or add the bathroom to chase a want-list ranking; the recovery data says half comes back.
Staying. Group two is where the joy is: the patio and lighting both scored 9.9–10 with NAR's respondents. Buy them for that, and budget for the resale recovery the data shows, not the one the want list implies.
Deciding between bigger and better. NAHB's own respondents answered this: the home they want is 193 square feet smaller than it was twenty years ago. The addition projects at the bottom of the Cost vs. Value ranking, primary suites at 18–32% recovered, are the ones buyers say they want least and pay for least.
The rule
The want list tells you what gets a house on the shortlist. The recovery data tells you what a buyer pays for once it is there. Build for the first with money from the second, and when a feature has never been measured, spend on it like it hasn't.
The pre-listing list from NAR's Realtor survey is in Before You List. The replacement projects, including windows, are in Windows, Roof, Siding.