Upgrading Your Kitchen Range and Range Hood Can Boost Your Home’s Resale Value

Home improvement can offer a healthy return on investment (ROI) when you're ready to sell, especially when it comes to kitchen appliance upgrades. According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), upgrading your kitchen is one of the smartest investments you can make.

In fact, when the Journal of Light Construction studied minor kitchen remodels in 2025, they found homeowners achieving a more than 100% average return on their investments.

One of the quickest, easiest, and most cost-effective ways to boost your home's value is to replace both your range and your range hood with modern, high-quality upgrades.

Is a 100% ROI really that impressive? (Hint: Yes!)

Let's clear up something from the start. When we think about ROI in real estate terms, it doesn't work the same as regular investments. For example, if you bought a stock worth $1 per share, and you sold it at 90 cents per share, that would see an ROI of 90% (which comes to a 10% loss).

With home improvement projects, things work differently. A 90% ROI on a home improvement project is excellent for the following 3 reasons.

1. You're not just buying value, you're buying use: If you remodel your kitchen and remain in the home for 5 years, you're enjoying that kitchen daily, and you're getting 90% of the money back when you sell.
2. Remodels protect value more than they create it: If your home is outdated, buyers mentally reduce what they're willing to pay by an amount that is greater (on average) than the cost of the upgrade. In other words, a severely outdated kitchen may cost $20,000 to fix, but buyers will tend to subtract much more (maybe $30k - $40k) from their final offer.
3. Homes with upgraded kitchens sell faster: You're carrying the cost of the mortgage, property taxes, insurance, etc., while your home sits on the market, and that's only part of the equation. The longer a home sits there, the more buyers assume there's something wrong with it, which leads to price reductions. Leverage drops when buyers see "30+ days on market" or "60+ days on market."

With an average ROI of just over 100% for minor kitchen improvements like adding a new range, some homeowners will exceed 100% ROI, while others get less. Full-scale kitchen remodels have a lower ROI than minor kitchen remodels (NAR estimates at least a 60% return), but that's still a solid return in real estate terms.

And again, minor upgrades (like buying a new kitchen range) have the greatest impact, as the Journal of Light Construction found. You can see from this chart that minor kitchen upgrades have achieved high returns, with ROIs approaching or exceeding 100% in recent years.

Buyer psychology: Why a modern range has a solid impact

First impressions are huge. When a prospective buyer tours a home, they're not scouring every detail. They're not going to ask about your cooktop's burner strength, but it's easy to tell a modern kitchen range from an older one. If appliances look dated, that plays a role in their offer price.

How does that work? Nobody is making notes and crunching numbers based on what they see, right? Well, this is the power of the market—what economists call the invisible hand.

With all economic goods and services, from milk prices to properties, buyers and sellers find common ground between supply and demand. It's not an entirely conscious process, but after seeing a number of homes, buyers get a sense of what the market will bear.

After studying thousands of data points across the country, real estate analysts have learned that dated kitchen appliances drag down the value of a home.

Beyond the bottom line

Home improvement isn't just about ROI. It's also about improving your quality of life. NAR's 2025 Remodeling Impact Report found that homeowners also experience greater satisfaction from remodeling their kitchen, compared to every other remodeling project they reviewed.

When you put all the pieces together, from quality of life to future resale value, modernizing your major kitchen appliances just makes sense. This is especially true for passionate home chefs.

How the range and range hood work together

If you're upgrading your range, there's a strong case for upgrading your range hood as well. Choosing a range hood that matches your range creates a coherent look and suggests intentional design. Mismatched appliances feel pieced together and will likely impact your home's value.

Function matters as well. Modern kitchens often have powerful cooktops, requiring equally powerful ventilation systems (i.e., range hoods) to handle the exhaust.

Take a look at our 6-step range hood buying guide to find the perfect range hood for your kitchen.

Upgrading your kitchen range

When it comes to purchasing a new kitchen range, you've got a lot of options, from gas to dual-fuel to induction ranges. That's why we created the kitchen range buying guide, so you can find the perfect range for your kitchen.