The Faux-Stone Countertop You Should Consider Replacing Before Selling Your Home

When preparing to sell your home, you undoubtedly want to maximize the resale value. Your realtor may suggest specific steps you can take to make the house more appealing to buyers. For example, you may consider adding new paint colors to positively affect your home's resale value. But if you want to make more significant changes that will potentially bring bigger dollars, even minor kitchen upgrades can increase your resale potential. You may find that the kitchen countertop choices you made in the past are making it harder to sell the house, let alone maximize the amount you receive. While materials like marble can increase your property value, others that look like stone, like laminate and solid surface, may not increase it at all.

You can purchase laminate countertops that look like natural stone, but they still have the same problems as other laminate styles, such as being prone to scratches and chips. If you set hot items directly on the laminate, it could damage it. If you leave laminate countertops in your kitchen when trying to sell the home, it could cause the resale value to drop, especially if the material is in poor shape. Alternatively, you may have synthetic solid surface countertops that look like stone. As a benefit, they are often cheaper to install than real stone while resisting staining. However, they aren't as durable or heat-resistant as the real thing, leading to a lower resale value than actual stone countertops.

If you are considering replacing a countertop that looks like stone with one that is the real thing to try to increase the resale value of your property, you just have to do some math. If you are having a realtor help you with the sale of the house, this professional can help you make cost estimates versus the return on your investment. You probably won't receive a dollar-for-dollar return on your investment if you replace countertops as part of a complete kitchen remodel. A midrange kitchen remodel could deliver a return of between 42% and 86%, according to the 2023 Cost Vs. Value Report, but you may spend $27,000 or more for this type of remodel, meaning it may not be the best investment for you as you sell your home.

Perhaps you want to spend a little less while trying to maximize your return. You could pay an average of $3,000 for a marble countertop or an average of $3,250 for granite. Although it's difficult to know how much installing a high-end countertop could help your home's resale value, simply having this material in your kitchen may help you compete with higher-valued homes in your neighborhood. "Granite can increase the value of your home by as much as 25 percent of the countertop's retail value," Robert Measer of Hunt Real Estate told Stone Specialists.