High-ROI, Value-Add Renovations for Any Investor (and How Much They'll Cost)

Investors have used the same proven formula for decades: Buy a discounted property, renovate it, and increase its value by tens or sometimes even hundreds of thousands of dollars. It’s a simple investing strategy, and yet it’s one of the best ways to get rich through real estate investing. But there’s a catch that too many investors miss. You can’t renovate just anything; you have to renovate the right things. After over 100 real estate deals, Henry knows exactly what moves the needle, and in part two of our series on estimating rehab costs, we’re showing you what to prioritize on your next renovation project. First, we’ll walk you through the typical “moneymakers”—kitchens and bathrooms—what to improve, what not to improve, and what you should budget for these updates. But then, we’ll share three upgrades many investors never think about, yet they can have the greatest impact on property value (and rents!). Whether you’re flipping houses or updating a rental property, this is the exact value-add playbook you should be using in 2026! In This Episode We Cover High-ROI renovations to prioritize on every investment property Low-cost upgrades that can add value to your rental property What actually makes a difference when updating kitchens and bathrooms The typical cost of a cosmetic kitchen or bathroom renovation Common renovation mistakes that will make your bathroom look “cheap” And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠h⁠⁠t⁠t⁠ps://www⁠.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1329⁠. Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Henry Washington?

  Spend $20,000 on a kitchen and your house is worth 50,000 more. This is the whole game of real estate investing and I've done it more than a hundred times. You buy an undervalued house, you renovate the right things and the value goes up far more than you spent. The hard part is knowing which fixes actually matter to home appraisers, home buyers and home renters. So today I'm going to show you which renovations pay you back the most and how to estimate the cost of each one before you buy the house. We'll cover kitchens, bathrooms, and even a few of my favorite hacks that really boost your value for a lot cheaper than you think. I'm trying to make you tens of thousands of dollars in this episode and all you need to do is watch.

• 0:46Henry Washington?

  Welcome everybody. This is part two of our series on how to estimate rehab costs. Check out part one if you missed it. That's where we covered the very important big five plumbing, electrical, HVAC, foundation and roof. Those are your big ticket items. We want to make sure that you are accounting for those prior to buying the home so that you can get the home at the right price. But today we're covering the things that you can actually do that put the dollars in your pocket. We are talking value add investing. This is my bread and butter. This is what I love to do. And this applies to flipping, but it also applies to rental properties. You can add value pretty easily in single family and small multifamily homes.

• 1:29Henry Washington?

  If you know what to look for, what it's going to cost, and you know that it's actually going to give you a return. Cause there is a lot of renovations and value add that you can do that don't really add a lot of value. It may look pretty, but it won't always put money in your pocket. So today I'm going to cover where in the home you should focus on adding value? How much it's going to cost you to add said value? And whether it's going to be worth it or not for you to even take on the risk of doing it based on the returns that you could get. All right. Since everybody knows that kitchens and bathrooms sell home, let's start with the kitchen. When I am looking at adding value to a kitchen, first and foremost, I am looking to see is the layout of the kitchen as it sits desirable.

• 2:14Henry Washington?

  Remember just updating that kitchen is going to add value, but if it's got a decent enough layout, spending the money to rearrange the kitchen completely is not going to bring you much more value than you just renovating in place. So I would not recommend completely changing the layout of a kitchen unless the current layout is very undesirable for the house that you have. So let's go through each one of these individual factors of a kitchen and talk about what it might cost. Starting with the flooring, I typically don't budget flooring in a kitchen separately than flooring for the whole house. When I'm planning a renovation, the flooring that goes in the kitchen gets bundled into my flooring costs for the entire house.

• 2:56Henry Washington?

  But on average, I'm going to put tile in wet spaces. And in kitchens, I'm typically trying to use larger tiles to save money. So think the 12 by 24 inch brick style tiles, or I'll do a 12 by 12 inch square tile and I'll mix up the colors to make it a little more modern. But think of a tile floor, probably going to spend anywhere from a dollar 50 to $3 per square foot for tile. So if you want to understand how much it's going to cost you to put flooring in your kitchen, you just need to measure the square footage of the floor and then multiply that by the cost of your tile and then the cost of the labor.

• 3:36Henry Washington?

  Labor is going to cost anywhere in my neck of the woods between a dollar 50 and $2.50 per square foot. So if I'm paying 250 for tile and I'm paying somebody 250 for labor, that's $5 a square foot. If I have a 250 square foot kitchen, 250 times five is about $1,250 for flooring. Next, let's talk about countertops. I am typically only renovating a single family, three bed, two bath, maybe smaller, maybe a little bigger home. And on average, in that size home, the average square footage of kitchen countertop space

• 4:19Henry Washington?

  is usually anywhere between 35 to 40 square feet, all the way up to about 70 square feet. If you're renovating massive homes, you're going to need to be on the higher side, square footage side. If you're renovating smaller homes, you might have a galley kitchen that's a little smaller. Maybe you're at 25 to 35 square feet. A typical price point for countertops, depending on what you get, maybe solid surface, maybe granite, maybe quartz. You can expect to spend anywhere between $25 a square foot, all the way up to $40 a square foot. So if you're pricing this, call a countertop company and ask them, what do they charge per square foot for an average quartz? Or what do they charge per square foot for an average granite?

• 5:02Henry Washington?

  If they are charging $30 a square foot and you are installing about 40 square foot of countertop space, well, that's just a quick math problem of 30 times 40, that's going to give you about $1,200 for countertops. And typically that's what I'm spending. I rarely spend more than $2,000 on countertops. I rarely spend less than a thousand dollars on countertops in this space. So I can quickly do math when I'm in a house and look at a kitchen and say, oh, this is going to cost me about 1,500 bucks. The next item to think about, and I would encourage you all to consider this one because it is very low cost, but can have a big impact, maybe not on the value, but on the desirability of the kitchen, is to install kitchen backsplashes.

• 5:46Henry Washington?

  I love doing fancy, more expensive tiles and kitchen backsplashes. A typical kitchen backsplash may be anywhere between 15 to 25 square feet on up to 35 to 50 square feet, depending on where the kitchen is laid out or how it's laid out, but it's not a lot of space. So you can spend more money on a nicer, fancier, cooler looking tile and really make your kitchen pop. Now, having a kitchen backsplash versus not having a kitchen backsplash isn't going to make your house more or less valuable. But as I said before, it will absolutely make your house more desirable. The more desirable it is, the more people want that house, the more people want that house, the more offers you get, the faster you sell your home.

• 6:30Henry Washington?

  Materials wise, you're not talking a lot of money. You can buy a five, six, seven, eight, nine, $10 per square foot tile. If you're only installing it on 35 to 45 square feet of space, you're still talking about less than a thousand dollars worth of materials. And then the labor to install the tile is not very expensive either. So for right around a thousand dollars, you can get a very nice kitchen backsplash that I think is well worth the investment. All right. Next on the list is going to be kitchen cabinets. Now this is where you're going to spend the majority of your money on your kitchen renovation. Cabinets are not cheap. You have several options when you're doing cabinets.

• 7:10Henry Washington?

  You've got your generic big box store cabinets where you can go and select the different pieces to fit the layout of your kitchen. You've also got much more higher end options, which you can get from custom cabinet makers. Those are typically going to be real wood cabinets. They're going to be much more pricey. Or you could go with something shipped in from overseas, uh, like China to bring in cabinets that are nicer looking maybe, and maybe less expensive, but the lead time on getting them can be very long. But cabinets are where you're going to spend a lot of money. And I would encourage you, if you're going to go ahead and spend the money on cabinets, don't cheap out and get the cheapest cabinets possible because cheap cabinets look like cheap cabinets.

• 7:52Henry Washington?

  And people will see your renovated kitchen and see the cheap cabinets and think if they cheaped out here, where else did they cheap out on this renovation in the rest of the house? So if you're going to spend the money, make sure that you spend the money on a decent cabinet. I'm not saying everything has to be real solid wood all the way through, but don't get the particle board cabinets that have like a laminate paper cover over them to make them look like they're not particle board cabinets. Those people spot them from a mile away. If you're just going to ballpark it, I would say between eight and 10 grand is probably where you should ballpark this number for a typical 1,500 square foot, you know, three bed, two bath home.

• 8:33Henry Washington?

  But that's not your only option for kitchens. Remember I said, I only put in new cabinets in kitchens. If I'm trying to change the layout, if I like the existing layout and the current cabinets are okay. What I prefer to do is not to get new cabinets, but to get new cabinet doors. I can take the doors off of the current kitchen cabinet boxes. If the boxes are in good shape, that's great. Oftentimes you can get in there, you can just clean those boxes. And a lot of the times, if you're renovating a home built in the sixties, seventies, a lot of those cabinets are solid wood cabinet boxes. If you were to replace them, you might not get the same quality.

• 9:17Henry Washington?

  So they're good quality a lot of the times. And so I like to keep them. I will have them professionally cleaned. I will have the inside of them all painted. And then I will get new cabinet doors and I will get soft closed hinges. And so to the naked eye, people just think it looks like brand new cabinets. That is a much more cost effective option if you're not going to change the layout. The typical cost for new cabinet doors on a standard three bed, two bath, 1,500 square foot house is usually run me anywhere between $1,100 and $2,200. That's going to depend on the size of the cabinet doors, whether they're a standard size or something that's custom, and what style cabinet door that you have them build. The more intricate the design on the front of the cabinet door.

• 10:00Henry Washington?

  The more it's gonna cost you. I typically just do a shaker style, which means it's usually just a couple of pieces of trim and it's a whole lot cheaper. But I would much rather spend two grand to get a brand new kitchen look and feel versus spending five to $8,000 for brand new cabinets that look exactly the same and function the same as the ones that were there previously. All right. Next on the list is paint. Again, this is pretty easy. I usually include my paint of my kitchen cabinets. In other words, if I'm keeping the existing cabinets and I'm just painting the boxes and the insides, that's included in the paint quote for the entire house. So just add the square footage of your kitchen into the paint quote, and then that will cover painting the cabinets as well.

• 10:43Henry Washington?

  But if you're gonna paint them separately or get a separate quote for painting the cabinets, I've spent anywhere between 500 bucks on up to $1,500 to paint cabinets. It's gonna depend on what kind of paint you're using and how big your kitchen is. But it shouldn't be too expensive. And last on the list for kitchen is appliances. Yes, appliances are expensive, but you don't always have to put high-end appliances in your kitchen to get more value. So this is where things can get a little tricky because if you are flipping the house, you need to pay attention to your comps and what appliances are being sold with properties that are similar to yours, because you don't wanna be delivering somebody

• 11:28Henry Washington?

  a house that is missing appliances that they get with other competition that you have. In my market, it is very rare that when someone flips a house or when someone buys a new house, that it comes with a refrigerator or a new refrigerator. Most renovated properties include appliances that are the dishwasher, and it's usually a new one, a stove, oven, or a cooktop, and it's usually a new one. Very rarely are there microwaves, so we're not including those, but we are including vent hoods. But this is very specific to my market. There are some markets where people fully expect a decked out kitchen. They want the fridge, they want the range, they want top of the line.

• 12:11Henry Washington?

  You have to study your comps to know what you're gonna spend. But I don't need to lecture to you guys about what appliances cost. You've all probably bought appliances before. On average, I'm spending about $500 to $700 on a range. I'm spending about $300 to $400 on a dishwasher, and I'm not buying refrigerators and I'm not buying microwaves. But I am putting vent hoods in where it's over the stove. So you've got a vent hood that will duct any smoke out from cooking. Those typically run me about $50 to $80. If you've been doing the math, we spent about $1,200 on floors, $1,200 on countertops, about $1,000 on a backsplash,

• 12:52Henry Washington?

  $1,500 on cabinet doors, about $1,000 on paint, and about $1,000 on appliances. That puts us just shy of $7,000 for a standard cosmetic kitchen renovation, and that's a pretty typical cost. When I'm estimating a rehab or I'm just ballparking a house as I'm walking through it, I'm usually estimating a kitchen renovation at about $10,000. So when you actually put pen to paper, I'm coming in a little under that, but I like to be very conservative on my estimates. All right, that is a standard kitchen renovation. Next on the list is what's it gonna cost you to renovate or update a bathroom? And we're gonna get to that right after the break.

• 13:36Henry Washington?

  Here's a strategy that most W2 employees have never heard of. Normally, if you wanna write off a rental property against your regular income, you need real estate professional status. That means tracking hundreds of hours a year. Rent to Retirement just launched a program that skips all of that. It's called the STR loophole tenant placement program. Here's how it works. You buy one of Rent to Retirement's Class A new construction investment properties. You set up an Airbnb listing and self-manage it for the remainder of the year. Rent to Retirement then rents the home as a short-term rental to establish it as an STR for the year, no furnishing required, making this the easy button to save five or six figures in taxes this year.

• 14:18Henry Washington?

  And because you're the sole manager, there's no hourly minimum to meet. That lets you use a cost segregation study to accelerate the depreciation and potentially write off over $100,000 against your income, even on your first rental. Add in cash back up to 13% of the home price, which exceeds $60,000 on some properties. With this massive cash back incentives, investors are seeing total returns up to 126%. New construction, A-class properties, and inventory is limited. Learn more at biggerpockets.com/retirement or text REI to 33777. Again, text REI to 33777.

• 15:00Dave Meyer?

  Most investors only think about insurance when something goes wrong. A tenant injury, storm damage, loss of rent. Then suddenly, the cheapest policy doesn't feel like the best one anymore. That's why a lot of BiggerPockets investors use steadily for landlord insurance designed specifically for rental properties. Whether you own one property or a growing portfolio, they make it simple to get covered properly. And BiggerPockets Pro members get an extra 5% off their landlord insurance premiums. Visit biggerpockets.com/landlordinsurance to get a quote today.

• 15:34Henry Washington?

  Quick word about a new pro perk you'll wanna know about. Aven. If you're a homeowner, there's a good chance you're sitting on equity that you're not using. The problem is tapping into that usually means a cash-out refi, a traditional second mortgage, or weeks of paperwork just to get approved. Aven built something different. It's a credit card, but it's backed by your home equity. So you get a lot of the rate benefits of a HELOC with the flexibility of a card you can use anywhere. Rates are typically well below a standard credit card. Approval is fast and mostly online, and you can use it for anything. A renovation, paying down high-interest debt, or just have more breathing room in your budget. And if you're a BiggerPockets Pro member, there's an extra reason to check it out. Get approved for the Aven card and you'll get a $400 statement credit

• 16:17Henry Washington?

  after spending $400 on your Aven card, enough to cover your entire annual Pro membership. Head over to aven.com/biggerpockets to see if you qualify. Aven Financial, NMLS #2042345. Cards issued for 2020. License from Visa USA, Inc. By Coastal Community Bank. NMLS #462289. Member FDIC. Equal housing lender. Subject to approval. Terms apply. Visit aven.com for details.

• 16:39Speaker 02

  The action's on the court. And as the official beer sponsor of the NBA, Michelob Ultra is getting fans closer to the game with a chance to win courtside seats, merch, and more. Visit michelobultra.com/courtside to enter. Michelob Ultra Courtside, 26 to 27. No purchase necessary. Open to U.S. residents 21+. Begins on October 1st, 2026, and ends on June 30th, 2027. Multiple entry periods. See official rules at michelobultra.com/courtside for free entry, entry deadlines, prizes, and details.

• 17:07Henry Washington?

  What if your rentals could practically run themselves and give you a chance to win $10,000? That's exactly why I'm excited about Baseline's 10K giveaway. When I first started investing 10 years ago, everything was manual. Rent came into one account, bills went out from another, every transaction had to be tracked. I was constantly moving money between bank accounts, and I could never fully switch off. What changed for me was switching to Baseline. It's BiggerPockets' official banking platform, and with integrated bookkeeping, my rental finances are fully automated. Rent and payouts are deposited into dedicated property accounts. Transactions are automatically categorized, and every property's finances stay organized in one place. The biggest difference isn't just the automation, it's the peace of mind. I spend a lot less time managing my rental finances

• 17:52Henry Washington?

  and a lot more time focusing on growing my portfolio and enjoying the life I'm building. That's what banking that runs your rentals looks like. And right now, there's an extra reason to make the switch. Enter the 10K giveaway. Just deposit qualifying rental income into Baseline for a chance to win $10,000. Sign up now at baseline.com/bp.

• 18:18Henry Washington?

  All right, we are back on the BiggerPockets podcast. We are on our second episode of our series on how to estimate rehab costs. We covered the big five in the last episode, but in this episode, we're covering value add, what actually puts money in your pocket. We just covered renovating kitchens, what it costs and what you should or shouldn't do. And now we're jumping into updating or renovating bathrooms. So what is this gonna cost you? We already talked about flooring and how you estimate the flooring in a kitchen. You do the same thing in the bathrooms. In bathrooms, I use tile in the wet spaces. We talked about how much that costs before. It's the same cost here. Typically, an average bathroom in a typical three-bed, two-bath home

• 19:02Henry Washington?

  is gonna be anywhere between 40 square feet to 60 square feet. So call it 50 square feet, and we're spending about $5 on tile for labor and materials. Five times 50 is gonna give you about $250. Maybe add a little more if it's a little bigger, but just for flooring in a bathroom, 300 to 500 bucks is probably pretty normal unless you have a massive bathroom. Next item I wanna cover is the bathroom vanities. Now, when you're thinking about bathroom vanities, there's a couple of things I've done. Both of these options, you can either keep the existing bathroom vanity and you can just update the top. But 90% of the time, I would say that I'm putting a brand-new vanity in.

• 19:45Henry Washington?

  And the reason I'm doing that is because you can get vanities pretty inexpensively. And there's a lot of cool-looking, more modern, updated bathroom vanities that you can get that doesn't cost you much more than if you just put a top on the existing. Vanity. I'm typically spending anywhere between three hundred and a thousand dollars on a bathroom vanity. I will rarely spend more than a thousand dollars on a bathroom vanity. There are tons of options for you to get decent looking bathroom vanities for under a thousand dollars. You can find them at big box stores, you can find them on online shops, tons of options. Shop around, know what size you need and don't overspend.

• 20:28Henry Washington?

  You just want it to look good and you want it to fit in that space and look like it belongs there. Next on your list is going to be your bathing area. Now, there's a few options for bathrooms. Some bathrooms are going to have a tub shower combo. Some bathrooms are going to have a standalone tub and a standalone shower. And some bathrooms are only going to have a standing shower. So when I'm doing a bathroom, I almost always do floor to ceiling tiles. So if it's a bathroom with a tub, I'm tiling from the base of the tub all the way to the floor. If I'm tiling a shower, I'm tiling from floor to ceiling.

• 21:08Henry Washington?

  But I am always pricing tile. I am never pricing putting in a plastic insert. Plastic inserts, in my opinion, just look cheap. It makes the property look cheaper and more builder grade. And it is not a ton of money to buy the tile and to pay the labor to have it installed. So I found for value add, it's just a much better option to always go with tile. If you're doing a tub shower combo, then you want to price the tub and the tile differently. A typical price for a tub is going to run you anywhere between five hundred to eight hundred dollars. And then if you're getting that installed with installation, it shouldn't run you more than anywhere between fifteen hundred to twenty five hundred dollars.

• 21:52Henry Washington?

  Depending on if you've got to move plumbing from one side to the other because tubs drain in different areas. There's some things you have to consider, but for the most part, just like for like, it shouldn't cost you more than two thousand dollars for a tub to be replaced. All right. So when you're estimating tile for a bathroom, whether a tub surround or a shower, you have to measure the square footage. Average square footage for this space is going to be around seventy five square feet. If it's a bigger shower, you need to go up, but just a typical tub surround, if you're tiling from tub to ceiling, consider it about seventy five square feet. Materials for that could run you anywhere between five hundred dollars to a thousand dollars,

• 22:35Henry Washington?

  depending on the cost of the tile that you want to use. So just take the cost per square foot of the tile, multiply that by seventy five square feet, add a little bit extra for the other materials you'll need like grout. And then you have to consider the labor. So labor for installing tile for tub and shower surrounds, it's a little more expensive than installing tile for floors, especially because floor tiles are usually bigger, whereas shower tiles are probably smaller, especially if you're doing like a shower pan with a much smaller like penny tile. So the cost for installing tile for a tub or shower,

• 23:14Henry Washington?

  it may run you anywhere between ten to fifteen dollars per square foot, all the way up to like twenty to thirty dollars per square foot. So if you're getting bids, make sure you ask them what their cost per square foot is on the install. Don't just look at their out the door price and not understand how that number breaks down. So for the sake of this exercise, let's say we're spending about eight hundred dollars on materials for seventy five hundred square foot shower and then twenty dollars for labor for seventy five square feet. Twenty dollars per square foot times seventy five is fifteen hundred plus eight hundred for the tiles.

• 23:55Henry Washington?

  Put you at about twenty three hundred dollars to tile a tub surround. Or similarly to tile a shower, it's not going to be that much more expensive. You don't have the cost of the tub, but you do have added cost of more tile because now you have to tile all the way to the floor and you have to put a shower drain pan in. All right. Next on the list is paint. I think we covered paint and we talked about how to estimate kitchens. It'll be done very similarly here. Just add a cost per square foot for that particular room and add that to your total. And the very last thing is going to be all your accessories. That's going to be light fixtures, cabinet fixtures, plumbing fixtures for the tub or the shower.

• 24:37Henry Washington?

  Here's how I essentially estimate those. If you bought a new vanity, it should already come with cabinet fixtures. So you're not having to buy those if you bought a new vanity, but if you kept the existing vanity, you may be replacing the old handles with new handles. It's probably going to run you anywhere between a hundred bucks and three hundred bucks, depending on how fancy you want to get with those cabinet pulls. Uh, I always pull the old mirror off the wall and I order a new modern framed mirror. You can get a mirror on a big box store or you can get a mirror on an online store for anywhere between fifty to a hundred and fifty bucks. And then light fixtures, light fixtures are typically going to run you about a hundred bucks per light fixture.

• 25:19Henry Washington?

  So for five, six hundred bucks, you can get all the accessories you need. Uh, even the plumbing fixtures, I get my plumbing fixtures from an online retailer. For a sink fixture, I'm spending anywhere between like twenty and fifty bucks. And for a shower fixture, I'm spending anywhere between like fifty and a hundred bucks. So putting all the numbers together, you're spending about three to five hundred bucks on floors, about a thousand bucks on a vanity, about twenty eight hundred bucks to three thousand bucks on a shower or tub. And then about another thousand dollars on lights and fixtures. That brings your total to around five thousand dollars, which is right around where I estimate a bathroom renovation when I'm walking a house. This is a typical cost broken down for you.

• 26:01Henry Washington?

  Now, a couple of other things to consider when you're estimating these is we talked about floors and paint for a lot of these renovations. And I told you when I do this, I actually estimate the paint and the flooring for the house as a whole and not in these individual rooms because there's only going to be one vendor, typically two vendors who are doing all of the paint and maybe all of the flooring. So when I'm estimating paint for the whole house, I'm taking the total square footage of the house and I am multiplying that by what it costs per square foot to do that work. In terms of paint, what I am typically estimating for painting the entire house

• 26:40Henry Washington?

  is somewhere between three dollars and fifty cents a square foot on up to five dollars and fifty cents a square foot. So that's going to depend on the kind of paint you're going to use and it's going to depend on whether that's going to include the kitchen cabinets and the bathroom cabinets or not. If you're going to do cabinets, then you're going to want to go a little higher than three fifty. Maybe you're somewhere around five dollars per square foot. And if you're going to do no cabinets and you're just talking walls, trim, ceilings, doors, then you can stay on the lower end of that cost per square foot. So typical fifteen hundred square foot house at five dollars a square foot is going to cost you around seven thousand five hundred dollars for interior paint.

• 27:19Henry Washington?

  In terms of flooring, it can get a little trickier. I am still going to take the entire square footage of the house because I want to consider all of it in one number. But I may be using different flooring in different rooms. I told you I like to use tile in the wet room. So I typically put tile in the kitchens, tile in the laundry rooms, tile in the bathrooms. I do LVP in the common areas. So hallways, living rooms typically get some sort of luxury vinyl plank. And on a flip, I do carpet in the bedrooms. All of these floorings are all going to be a different cost per square foot and the labor is even going to be a little different cost per square foot. But I typically blend all that together and use one number to estimate.

• 28:01Henry Washington?

  So my blended cost per square foot for flooring for a flip typically is going to be anywhere around five fifty a square foot, all the way up to eight to ten dollars a square foot, depending on the level of materials. If I'm doing a higher end flip, it's going to cost more. If I'm doing a lower end flip, it'll cost less. And then I just take the blended cost per square foot and I multiply that by the square footage. So for the sake of this exercise, we'll consider six dollars and fifty cents a square foot for the total flooring. For a fifteen hundred square foot house, it's going to run me about ten thousand dollars for flooring. So that's how you estimate the entire home. That way you're not having to break that out for each individual room when you're estimating.

• 28:43Henry Washington?

  Cause now you've got one total quote, makes it a whole lot easier to estimate, allows you to be quicker when you're estimating. It allows you to spot check what you're getting from contractors when you get bids. Okay. So those are your moneymakers, kitchens and bathrooms. Now you know what to renovate in the kitchens and bathrooms and how much it's going to cost. I want to move on and talk about how to find opportunities within the current roof structure of a home to add value and I'm going to do that right after the break.

• 29:11Dave Meyer?

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• 29:55Dave Meyer?

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• 31:08Henry Washington?

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• 31:24Dave Meyer?

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• 34:05Henry Washington?

  We are back on the BiggerPockets Podcast, and we are talking about how to estimate rehabs. And specifically on this episode, which is part two of a series on how to estimate rehabs, we are talking about adding value. We've covered bathrooms, we've covered kitchens, and now I want to cover one of my favorite topics, which is how to spot opportunities to add value within the current home under its current roof structure without spending a ton of money. One of the first things I look for when I am renovating a house is, does the house that I'm renovating have space under the current roof structure that is

• 34:46Henry Washington?

  not currently heated and cooled? And if I add heating and cooling to that room, A, can I do it easily? And B, does it increase the desirability of the home, or will it decrease the desirability of the home? Is there maybe a sunroom that is under the current roof structure that is not heated and cooled? There is a lot of homes that are built in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s that have sunrooms. Some of those sunrooms are just screened in. Some of those sunrooms are complete, actual rooms with drywall and windows, but the spaces are not heated and cooled. It is very inexpensive to heat and cool those

• 35:27Henry Washington?

  spaces if you can just add a run off of the current HVAC system to that room. So sometimes all you have to do is add a little bit of ductwork and a vent, and now that room is heated and cooled, and now you can add the square footage of that room to the heated and cooled square footage of the home. And we all know homes are valued based on a cost per square foot. So let's say your home is valued at $225 a square foot. If you add 200 square feet, well, now you've added $45,000 in value to your home by just adding some ductwork. Now, there's probably some more you may have to do. You may have to, obviously,

• 36:11Henry Washington?

  do paint and floors in that room. Maybe you have to insulate the walls because they weren't properly insulated as a sunroom. But for less than $5,000, you can typically add heating and cooling, add any other ancillary parts that you need to that room, and you can now add that heated and cooled square footage. So I love looking for those opportunities. Another opportunity to look for in a similar vein is, can you convert garage space to living space? When I am looking to add value to a rental property, if it has a single-car garage, I typically convert it to living space. Why do I do that? Because the more

• 36:51Henry Washington?

  bedrooms I have, the more rent I can charge. And so if it costs me anywhere between $2,500 and $5,000 to convert a garage to living space, but I get an additional $250 a month of rent, well, then that renovation pays for itself after about a year and some change, and then all of that additional new cash flow just goes into my pocket every month. So maybe I didn't add value from the traditional sense of cost per square foot of the home, but I absolutely added money to my pocket because I'm getting increased rent, and that renovation pays for itself because I now am able to rent that property for $200 to $300 a month more. All right. So when you were considering converting a garage, here

• 37:34Henry Washington?

  is what to think about and what it may cost you. First and foremost, you need to understand, is your home on a crawl space, or is it on a concrete foundation? The easiest conversions for garage space are homes that are on a crawl space, but the garage itself is on a concrete foundation. This is a very common or popular style. Oftentimes, the house will sit up a little higher, and then when you walk into the garage, you have to come down a couple of steps because the house is up on a crawl space, but the garage is down on a concrete foundation. So what I like to do in that sense is you build up the floor. So you have your contractor build a base and a subfloor, and then you can make the

• 38:15Henry Washington?

  current garage level to where the current house is. And then it all feels seamless to walk from garage space into house space. That is the easiest way to do that. You're paying for some subfloors, and then it's just paying for the cost of the flooring, the cost for any build-out. So maybe you're not just raw converting the garage to a big open room, but maybe you're adding a hallway and making part of that garage maybe a laundry room or a primary bathroom. Then you're going to have to add some plumbing, but you've got now plenty of space to add plumbing because you built up from a concrete foundation up to the same level as the house. And now you've got all this crawl space area under

• 38:58Henry Washington?

  that garage. Makes it very inexpensive to add plumbing. So I love doing that. Converting a garage space can run you anywhere from $3,000 all the way up to maybe $10,000.

• 39:11Henry Washington?

  Depending on how fancy you're trying to get. If you're adding a bathroom, that cost goes up. Remember, we said it's about $5,000 to renovate a bathroom. So you might want to consider you're going to spend about $5,000 to $7,000 for a bathroom. Plus, you're going to spend what it's going to cost you to convert the garage space. So now you're talking somewhere between $7,000 and $10,000 for that renovation. But on average, just think five to 10 grand if I want to convert this space. More if you're doing a bigger space, less if you're doing a smaller space. All right, I've got one more value add option for you to think about. This is going to be a pretty unique situation because it depends on the age of the home or the layout of the home that you are renovating.

• 39:52Henry Washington?

  But a lot of homes that were built in the eighties and older have outdated layouts. And when I say outdated layouts, I mean, they have things like formal living rooms and regular living rooms and formal dining rooms and eat in kitchen dining rooms. To me, that is opportunity to add a bedroom. Now, again, that heated and cooled square footage is already existing in the home. So by converting these spaces, you're not necessarily making the home worth a ton more, but you're absolutely increasing the desirability because you're modernizing the layout of the home. So I 90% of the time will convert formal living rooms and formal dining rooms

• 40:36Henry Washington?

  to bedrooms or offices. So what all is entailed with doing this? All bedrooms must have a door, a window, and a closet. So if I'm converting a formal living room or formal dining room, typically I don't have to add a window because most formal dining rooms and formal living rooms have an exterior facing wall and should already have a window. But you do oftentimes have to find a space to add a closet. You can just add a closet along one wall of the room or you can build out maybe like a small corner closet if the room is smaller. But that's just going to be some two by fours, some drywall and some paint in order to build that out. It's very inexpensive.

• 41:18Henry Washington?

  If you are going to convert a room and you do not need to add a window, we're talking less than $3,000 typically to convert that room. And you can now get increased rent as a rental or you can increase the saleability or desirability of that home. And I think it's money well spent. Now, in the rare situation where you've got to convert one of these rooms and you have to add a window, the cost can go up substantially depending on what type of house it is. But without adding the window, very, very inexpensive and absolutely something you should consider. All right, there you have it. Now you've got all kinds of numbers, the ones that I specifically use for my projects. Make sure you do your own research.

• 42:00Henry Washington?

  Labor and materials cost more or less in different parts of the country. So don't just take what I told you and use that blanket and hope it works for you. Do a little bit of legwork, use some AI, use some contractor bids, dial in your numbers, build your own spreadsheets, and you'll be analyzing renovations in a snap, just like that. Thank you for tuning into this episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast. I appreciate you watching. Hopefully this is valuable for you and we'll see everyone on the next episode.

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