In fact, I probably wouldn’t do a full kitchen remodel before selling unless there was a pretty specific reason.
If the cabinets are solid, the layout works and everything functions, you may be much better off cleaning it up, making a few targeted improvements, and letting the next owner decide what their $75,000 kitchen should look like.
On the other hand, there are houses where the kitchen is clearly holding the property back.
The trick is knowing which one you own.
These are two completely different projects.
If you’re planning to live in the house for another ten years, we can talk about the kitchen you want. Maybe you hate the layout. Maybe you want custom cabinetry. Maybe opening a wall completely changes the way your family uses the first floor. The return isn’t only what happens when you eventually sell — you get to use the kitchen.
If you’re listing the house six months from now, that changes the calculation. Now we’re spending your money on a kitchen somebody else is going to use, and we don’t know what that person wants.
That’s why I’d be much more conservative.
Say you’re considering spending $80,000 on a complete kitchen remodel before selling.
What cabinets should we choose? What countertop? What backsplash? What flooring? What appliances? Do buyers want white cabinets, or wood? Painted or stained? Modern or traditional? Do they want an island?
Maybe the person who buys the house would have happily purchased it with the old kitchen and remodeled it completely differently. You just spent $80,000 making a bunch of decisions for them.
That’s a very different proposition from spending $80,000 on a kitchen your family will enjoy for the next decade.
This is one of the few places where I’ll point you at somebody else’s data, because it’s better than my opinion.
The 2025 Cost vs. Value Report, published by the Journal of Light Construction and summarized by Zillow, puts the national averages like this:
Those are national averages and local results vary substantially, so I wouldn’t treat any of them as a promise about your house in Snyder or Northumberland County.
But the pattern is what matters, and the pattern is consistent year after year.
The bigger the kitchen project gets, the harder it becomes to recover every additional dollar at resale.
This is where I’d be careful.
Homeowners live in their houses every day. Eventually everything starts looking old to you. You notice every cabinet door. Every scratch. Every dated light fixture. Every countertop you’ve stared at for fifteen years.
A buyer doesn’t necessarily see it the same way. They may walk in and think those cabinets are dated, but they’re fine.
That’s very different from this entire kitchen needs ripped out before I can live here.
If the kitchen is clean, functional and reasonably maintained, you may not have the problem you think you have.
Before putting tens of thousands of dollars into it, I’d want your realtor to look at the house as it sits. Not just the kitchen. The whole property.
This matters more than comparing it to kitchens on Instagram.
Look at houses around your expected sale price. What do their kitchens look like?
If you’re selling a $250,000 house and every comparable property has a relatively basic kitchen, installing a $90,000 custom kitchen probably isn’t going to make yours a $340,000 house. You’ve likely over-improved it.
On the other hand, if buyers at your price point consistently expect renovated kitchens and yours is clearly the outlier, doing nothing may hurt you.
The house sets the budget. The neighborhood sets a ceiling.
That’s why I’d involve the person who actually understands your local resale market before deciding how far to take a pre-sale renovation.
This is where the numbers get much more interesting.
Maybe the layout is fine. The cabinet boxes are good. The kitchen just looks tired. Now we might consider:
That’s basically what we call a kitchen refresh. For a medium kitchen, ours generally fall around $20,000 to $35,000 depending on size and selections.
You’re improving what buyers see without rebuilding a room that already works. And that’s exactly the category the resale data likes.
There are situations where I’d at least run the numbers.
The kitchen may be in genuinely poor condition. Cabinets failing. Flooring damaged. Countertops worn beyond reasonable repair. The layout might be so dysfunctional that it’s an obvious objection. Maybe the house has already been substantially renovated everywhere else and the kitchen is the one room that makes the property feel unfinished.
But I wouldn’t make that decision because somebody said “kitchens sell houses.”
I’d want to know:
Then it’s a real estate investment decision, not a remodeling one.
If you’re spending $70,000 to create $35,000 of additional value immediately before selling, that’s not a very complicated calculation.
This sounds obvious, but renovation conversations get strange around it.
Imagine your house would sell for $300,000 today. You spend $50,000 remodeling the kitchen. Now it sells for $330,000.
Did the kitchen add $30,000 of value? Maybe. But you spent $50,000 getting it.
Your sale price went up. You didn’t make $30,000.
There can still be reasons to do it. Maybe the renovated house sells much faster. Maybe it attracts substantially more buyers. Maybe the existing kitchen creates financing or condition problems. Those benefits are real and they belong in the decision.
Just don’t look only at the higher sale price.
This is one of the biggest misconceptions in remodeling. Construction cost and real estate value are related. They are not the same thing.
You could easily spend $100,000 creating an incredible kitchen — custom cabinets, stone countertops, major structural changes, premium appliances, perfect lighting, beautiful finishes. That doesn’t mean an appraiser or a buyer adds $100,000 to whatever the house was worth yesterday.
A major kitchen remodel can be worth every dollar when you’re the person who gets to live with it.
That’s different from treating remodeling like depositing money into an account you can withdraw at closing.
That’s useful information. If the house has already been listed and multiple buyers independently react badly to the kitchen, now you have actual market feedback rather than a guess.
But I’d still ask whether remodeling is the right response.
Suppose the market is effectively discounting your house $20,000 because of the kitchen. Would you rather spend $60,000 remodeling it, or sell it for $20,000 less?
There are other factors, obviously. But doing the construction isn’t automatically the smarter financial choice.
Sometimes the cheapest renovation is the price reduction.
Here I’d be careful in the other direction. If you’re going to improve the kitchen before selling, do it intentionally.
Painting cabinets badly, installing the cheapest countertop available and throwing trendy finishes everywhere isn’t necessarily helping. Buyers can see bad work too.
And a rushed cosmetic renovation creates an even stranger situation: the kitchen looks newly renovated in the listing photos, but the buyer walks in and immediately starts finding things they don’t like. Now they know they’re paying for work they may want to replace.
Cheap work isn’t automatically good ROI just because it was cheap.
If you’re going to do something, do the appropriate scope well.
If you’re preparing a house for sale and there are legitimate problems elsewhere, I’d be very hesitant to spend the budget making the kitchen prettier first.
Leaking roof. Electrical problem. Water intrusion. Broken HVAC. Structural issue. Those deserve attention before a countertop does, and a buyer’s inspector is going to find them whether or not the kitchen photographs well.
I’d rather sell a house with a dated countertop and a sound roof than beautiful quartz underneath a roof that’s leaking.
Now the answer starts changing.
Five years is enough time that you actually get to use the kitchen. Maybe you spend $60,000. You enjoy it every day for five years. Then you recover some portion of that investment when you sell.
That’s very different from remodeling solely to put the house on the market.
The longer you expect to stay, the more I’d weight your enjoyment and the way your family uses the room, and the less I’d obsess over resale ROI.
Here’s my general answer, by situation.
Selling immediately, kitchen functional but dated. Probably not a full remodel. Clean it up, make targeted improvements, and talk to your realtor about what buyers in your market actually expect.
Selling immediately, kitchen in poor condition. Run the numbers. A refresh or remodel might make sense, but compare the real project cost against the realistic increase in sale value.
Selling in several years. Now your enjoyment counts too. Build something you actually want to use, while staying reasonable about the value of the house and the neighborhood.
No plans to sell. Stop designing the kitchen for a hypothetical future buyer. Build it for the people who actually live there.
That’s usually where I land. If you’re remodeling primarily for resale, spend as little as necessary to solve the actual problem. If you’re remodeling because you’re going to live there, that’s when it makes sense to spend money fixing the layout, improving storage and building the kitchen you actually want.
Those are two different investments.
For homeowners around Selinsgrove, Lewisburg, Sunbury, Northumberland, Danville, Shamokin Dam, Milton, Watsontown and the surrounding Susquehanna Valley, our kitchen pricing page can help you put real construction numbers against that decision.
Read what to spend money on in a kitchen and where to save. If the layout is the real complaint, keeping or changing it is the decision to make first — and cabinets are usually where a pre-sale budget goes furthest.
Does remodeling a kitchen increase home value?
Usually, but the increase isn’t necessarily equal to what you spend. National resale benchmarks show smaller kitchen updates recovering a much larger percentage of their cost than major gut or luxury remodels.
Should I renovate my kitchen before listing my house?
Not automatically. If the kitchen is functional but dated, a smaller cosmetic refresh, or even selling as-is, may produce a better financial result than a full remodel. The decision should be based on your local comparable sales, the project cost and the realistic post-renovation value.
What kitchen improvements have the best resale value?
On a percentage-of-cost basis, minor remodels and targeted cosmetic updates outperform complete high-end renovations. Keeping a functional layout and improving the visible finishes avoids the much higher cost of a full reconstruction.
Will I get 100% of my kitchen remodel cost back when I sell?
Don’t assume so. The 2025 Cost vs. Value Report put a minor kitchen remodel at about 113% of cost recovered nationally, but a major midrange remodel at about 51% and an upscale major remodel at about 36%. Local results vary, and ROI figures are averages, not guarantees.
Is it better to remodel the kitchen or lower the asking price?
Sometimes lowering the price is smarter. If buyers are discounting the house $20,000 because of the kitchen but fixing it costs $60,000, the renovation needs to create some benefit beyond eliminating that $20,000 objection.
How much should I spend on a kitchen before selling?
There isn’t a universal percentage I’d use. Start with the home’s current value, its likely value after renovation, comparable properties and the actual construction cost. The closer you are to selling, the harder I’d make every renovation dollar justify itself.
Fifteen minutes on the phone. You’ll have a realistic range before we hang up — and if we’re not the right people for it, I’ll tell you.