The Yard That Pays You Back: 11 Landscaping Projects Ranked by ROI

Direct answer: Routine care outperforms construction. In the National Association of REALTORS® / NALP 2023 Remodeling Impact Report: Outdoor Features , a $415 standard lawn-care program is estimated to recover $900 — roughly 217% of its cost — while a $90,000 in-ground pool is estimated to recover $50,000, roughly 56%. Both can be defensible purchases, but only one behaves like an investment. Recovery estimates are agent-estimated resale value at the time of the survey, not guaranteed sale proceeds.

The two projects with a perfect 10.0 Joy Score — landscape lighting and an in-ground pool — sit at the bottom of the recovery table. The highest-recovery project, standard lawn care, scores 9.4. That inversion is the practical lesson: enjoyment and resale are separate ledgers, and a homeowner should decide which one a given project is being bought from.

Compared with the earlier edition of the same survey, reported project costs rose materially across outdoor categories while estimated recovery percentages compressed for the largest construction projects. Directionally, routine care held its advantage and big-ticket lifestyle builds became relatively more expensive to recover. Treat this as a direction of travel, not a precise year-over-year index.