How much does decking add to the value of your home?

Decking can be a fantastic addition to your property. It effectively creates an additional room in your home. Whether you want to eat breakfast, host a barbecue, or use it as the social hub of your home and as a means of getting the kids away from their digital distractions, decking can give you all of these benefits, and more.

In addition to the potential lifestyle advantages of adding decking to your home, many homeowners look at how decking can add to the value of their property. This might be in the context of looking to sell up and move to a new house soon, or simply be through the eyes of someone wanting value from their renovation projects.

Why Adding Value Helps You Sell

As Open Agent reports, property values at the end of the last decade were generally in decline. If would be homeowners are expecting to find a bargain in the market, is it not counterproductive to look at doing things that will make your house more expensive to buy?

We can understand that logic, but it isn't the case.

Instead, think of it this way. If you’re selling your property and someone comes to view it, if you already have decking that’s value for the buyer as well as yourself. If decking is on their list of “wants”, then it already being there means they’re not thinking about paying the mortgage as well as finding the cash to pay to install it themselves. Potential homebuyers might be more likely to spend a little more on a property that has everything they want already in it, especially if the reduction in house prices elsewhere is not enough to justify then paying for decking – or another renovation – separately.

How Much Value Will Decking Add to My Home?

As with many things when it comes to home renovations, the answer is, “it depends”.

Although there is no comparable data for here in Australia, a study conducted in the United States found that wooden decks would, on average, recover 106% of their value in relation to the value of a property. For example, spending $10,000 on decking would therefore raise the property price by $10,600.

While those numbers don’t necessarily sparkle from the perspective of adding value, let’s remember that we have a different climate and market here in Australia, and that decking may add more value as a result.

The Service Seeking website takes a detailed look at the costs of decking in Australia here.

If you are a bit handy, one option to minimise the installation cost of decking, is to do it yourself. Decks are a common DIY project. Whilst we don't sell the timber/composite decking itself, we do sell all the fasteners you going to need to complete your project from frame anchors, to batten screws and the versatile stainless steel decking screws.

Whether you opt for woodenor composite materials when constructing your decking also makes a difference.

In general, a wooden deck will have a lower general cost than a composite decking set-up. While composite decking will add more value to your property in monetary terms, the percentage tends to be lower. Indeed, due to the higher cost of composite decking, you could find that the value increase of your property doesn’t even break even against what you’ve paid.

When thinking about the costs of adding decking to your home, if you’re skilled at building or DIY yourself then you could always install your own decking, thus removing labor costs from your budgeting. This will then increase the percentage increase in value of your home against the cost of your decking.

Should I Add Decking to My Home?

Depending on the state of the housing market when you come to sell your property, the reality is that your decking might not “pay for itself” when you part ways with your home and move elsewhere.

While this may be part of your motivation for adding decking to your home, you should also consider how it will improve your lifestyle in the ways we mentioned at the start of this article. You might also think about your decking as part of a wider project. What would decking combined with a swimming pool or a landscape gardening project add to your property?

If you’re adding decking for lifestyle reasons, you should also think about needing to replace worn out surfaces through the years.

Decking will add financial value to your home, if not necessarily proving lucrative from a profit perspective, but from a lifestyle standpoint it’s sure to be a winner that both you and your family will love.