Dated but well-maintained kitchen in an Australian family home before renovation

Do You Actually Get Your Money Back When You Renovate Before Selling?

September 25, 2026•4 min read

Do You Actually Get Your Money Back When You Renovate Before Selling?

By Melissa Daniels, Property Profit Strategist & Founder, Reno ProfitPro®

“Is there any evidence that the money you spend doing up your house before selling is recuperated?”

It’s a very good question — because spending money on a property before sale does not automatically mean you’ll get that money back.

The answer is:

Sometimes you will. Sometimes you’ll do considerably better than that. And sometimes you can spend money that the eventual buyer simply doesn’t reward.

That’s why I don’t believe the first question should be what should we renovate?

The first question is:

What is currently costing this property value — and is fixing it commercially worth it?

The renovation itself isn't the strategy

A new kitchen may remove a major buyer objection in one property.

In another, it may make the house look considerably better without increasing what its realistic buyer pool is prepared to pay by enough to justify the cost.

The same applies to bathrooms, flooring, painting, landscaping and larger renovations.

And sometimes the biggest opportunity isn't the most visually obvious problem.

A poor layout, missing bedroom, inadequate bathroom configuration, underused space or another buyer objection may have a much greater impact on a property's potential than something that simply looks dated.

That is why two homeowners can spend the same $50,000 preparing their homes for sale and achieve very different financial results.

So how do you know what is worth spending?

Before I recommend where money should be spent, I want to understand the property itself.

What is it worth in its current condition?

Who is the realistic buyer?

What are comparable properties actually selling for?

What else will buyers be comparing it with?

What does that buyer expect at this price point?

What is stopping this particular property from competing with the better-performing homes?

And critically:

What could it realistically be worth after the right changes?

Not every improvement deserves a budget simply because it would make the property nicer.

The numbers still have to work.

I start with three numbers

Before committing serious money to preparing a property for sale, I want to know:

1. What is the property realistically worth now?

Not what we hope it is worth. What does the current evidence support?

2. What could it realistically be worth after the right changes?

Based on comparable sales, the likely buyer, competing properties and what buyers at that level are actually paying for.

3. What will it genuinely cost to bridge that gap?

Not just the headline renovation quote.

The real cost of creating the intended result — including the smaller expenses that can quietly erode the margin.

Those three numbers matter far more than a generic list of “renovations that add value.”

What does the Australian evidence tell us?

There is evidence that preparing and improving a property before sale can improve the result.

Realestate.com.au has previously reported survey findings showing many sellers believed renovation increased their eventual sale price even after accounting for renovation costs.

But importantly, it also acknowledged that determining exactly how much value a renovation adds to an individual property is difficult.

Domain has similarly advised homeowners to examine competing properties and understand what their likely buyer expects before committing to renovation.

There are also individual Australian examples where a renovated property has achieved a sale-price difference substantially greater than the reported cost of the work.

But a successful renovation case study tells us what happened to that property.

It does not guarantee the same return on yours.

And that distinction matters when it is your money at risk.

The question isn't simply “Will renovating add value?”

Most improvements can add something.

The commercial question is:

Will the right improvements add more value to this particular property than they cost to complete?

That answer depends on the property, buyer, price point, competition, current condition, achievable end value and cost of getting there.

This is why blindly copying what worked for the house down the road — or following a generic list of the “best renovations before selling” — can be expensive.

Your property has its own numbers.