ee hes PAPAL ALIA e. Evaluating The Return On A Remodeling Project (NAPSA)—Preparing a home for resale can involve difficult and costly decisions as sellers look to find every advantage to attract buyers. For those sellers, a new report from Remodeling magazine pro- vides welcome guidance, detailing which improvement projects deliver the best return relative to the cost to complete. Many might find the results surprising. For example, the latest reports rank upscale fiber cement exterior home siding—a durable, low-maintenance alterna- tive to wood and vinyl—asthe No. improvement project when it comes to delivering the highest return at resale in today’s tough real estate market. The report finds that re-siding with fiber cement gives a 3 percent better return than adding a bathroom and costs $6,000 less to complete. “Remodeling magazine’s Cost vs. Value report is a valuable tool for sellers, as well as for real estate agents counselingsellers, when it comes to making home improvement decisions that will both attract buyers and protect the seller’s investment, particularly in today’s real estate market,” said P.J. Rosch, Senior Product Manager for James Hardie Building Products, which first introduced fiber cement siding in the U.S. in the early 990s. This is the fourth year in a row that fiber cement siding has taken the top ranking in this study, According to a new report, when compared to other home improvementprojects, fiber cement exterior home siding delivers the highestreturn at resale. above popular projects like kitchen and bath remodels. In other comparisons, the report showed that a minor kitchen remodel gives a 0 percent less return on investment than re-siding with fiber cement, while adding a second-story addition nets a 23 percent lower return on investment than fiber cementre-siding. “Fiber cement siding is a great investment from a financial perspective, but it also addssignificantly to the curb appeal of a home and helps protect it from nature’s elements, includingfire, wind and flood,” said Rosch, who cites products such as HardiePlank and the HardieWrap weatherbarrier system as having these protective characteristics. To learn more, www.JHReside.com. visit
