Return on investment gets talked about as though every dollar spent on a house behaves the same way. It does not. In Middle Tennessee the improvements that consistently hold their value are the ones a future buyer would have had to do anyway: kitchens, bathrooms, roofing, systems, and usable square footage.
What tends to hold its value
Kitchens and bathrooms remain the two rooms buyers judge a house by. A well-executed kitchen with sound layout and durable finishes reads as one fewer project for the next owner. The same is true of bathrooms, particularly where the waterproofing and substrate work has been done properly rather than tiled over.
Adding genuine square footage, whether that is a detached dwelling unit, a finished attic or a considered addition, tends to perform well simply because it changes what the property is rather than how it looks.
What is preference, and that is fine
Highly specific choices, a wine room, a particular stone, a bold colour, a pool, are worth doing if you want them. They just should not be justified on resale. Spend that money knowingly, as something you are buying for yourself rather than for a hypothetical buyer.
The honest framing
Most people are not remodeling to sell next year. They are remodeling because they want to live in the house differently. The useful exercise is not maximising return, it is separating the parts of the budget that protect value from the parts that buy enjoyment, then deciding deliberately how much of each you want.
