Homeowners who complete an outdoor remodeling project don’t stop there. 84% say the project made them want to remodel another part of the house or yard, according to the Remodeling Impact Report: Outdoor Features, produced jointly by the National Association of Realtors and the National Association of Landscape Professionals. The same report found homeowners rate their satisfaction with finished outdoor projects at an average Joy Score of 9.7 out of 10, with 52% saying they felt happy and 45% satisfied looking at the finished result. That’s an unusually consistent number across projects that otherwise range from a $415 lawn care service to a $90,000 in-ground pool — and it suggests something other than resale value is driving the decision to remodel outdoors at all.
The Number That Doesn’t Match Resale Value
Realtors surveyed for the report estimated cost recovery separately from the Joy Score, and the two numbers frequently move in opposite directions. A standard lawn care program costing $415 a year recovers an estimated 217% of its cost at resale, the highest return of any project measured. An in-ground pool costing roughly $90,000, by contrast, recovers only about 56% — yet it ties for the single highest Joy Score in the entire report, a perfect 10. Homeowners aren’t optimizing for the number a real estate agent would recommend; they’re optimizing for how the yard feels to look at.
What Actually Scored a Perfect 10
Two projects tied for the top Joy Score in the report: an in-ground pool addition and outdoor landscape lighting, the latter at a fraction of the pool’s cost — landscape lighting averaged $6,800 installed against the pool’s roughly $90,000, yet both scored a perfect 10 for homeowner satisfaction. A new patio came in just behind at 9.9, on a typical cost of $10,500. Every one of the eleven outdoor projects the report tracked scored 9 or higher, meaning there wasn’t a single outdoor upgrade in the data set that homeowners regretted after living with it.
Why 84% Wanting More Isn’t Just Enthusiasm
The report frames the 84% figure as evidence that outdoor remodeling reshapes how homeowners see the rest of the property, not just the yard. A finished deck or patio changes how a kitchen window, a back door, or an unfinished side yard reads by comparison — and the report’s own data suggests that shift in perception is what pushes most homeowners toward planning a second project almost immediately. It’s less “I’m happy with my yard” and more “now I can see everything else that doesn’t match it yet.”
The Costs Behind the Satisfaction Numbers
The report priced eleven separate outdoor features to pair with its satisfaction data: a new wood deck averaged $16,900, a new patio $10,500, an outdoor kitchen $15,000, an overall landscape upgrade $9,000, a fire feature $9,000, an irrigation system $6,000, landscape lighting $6,800, tree care $2,875, and landscape maintenance $4,800 a year. The outdoor kitchen and overall landscape upgrade both recovered an estimated 100% of their cost at resale — a full return, on top of scoring near the top of the Joy Score range, which makes them the rare projects in the data that satisfy both the emotional and financial argument at once.
Even the “Boring” Projects Score Well
Standard lawn care and landscape maintenance — the least dramatic items in the report, priced at $415 and $4,800 respectively — still landed within the same 9-plus Joy Score band as a $90,000 pool. That’s a meaningfully different pattern than indoor remodeling data, where cheaper cosmetic projects typically score lower on homeowner satisfaction than major renovations. Outdoors, upkeep itself appears to deliver close to the same emotional payoff as a full-scale addition — which may be part of why the category as a whole keeps producing repeat customers.
The Methodology Behind the Numbers
NAR and NALP built the report by surveying two different groups: REALTOR members estimated resale value recovery and buyer appeal for each project, while landscape professionals who are NALP members supplied typical project costs. That split is part of why the report can show a project with weak resale recovery still scoring a perfect Joy Score — the two halves of the data were never designed to agree, and the 84% figure comes from the homeowner-facing half of the survey rather than the cost-recovery half.
Put those two data sets side by side and outdoor remodeling starts to look less like a single financial decision and more like a habit that reinforces itself — each project raising the bar for what the rest of the property should look like, regardless of what a future buyer would actually pay for it.
