you cna over do it. since this is a starter home, in a neighborhood of starter homes, you want to do things nice, but NOT top of the line. you can easily lose a lot of money if you go too top-end, as no one will want to buy it.

Our starter home is so wildly overimproved, it took the neighborhood almost twenty years to catch up, LOL!

That said, yes you can definitely overdo on quality materials that you will NEVER recoup the cost on.

OTOH, certain quality items can help sell your home in a slow market. But not all of them, only a few - a better than average kitchen along with updated bathrooms, for instance. But in a starter home, laminate flooring is just as valuable as hardwood where we live - a new floor is a new floor, period. Double pane windows are a plus, but it doesn't matter whether they come from HDepot or Marvin - there's no higher resale $$ on the Marvin.

One thing that helped my DH understand the cost-value return on improvements was having a good local realtor come over and give us her opinion on the improvements we had done. We still had a list of things to do, and I was upfront with her that we weren't selling, just needed advice on whether we were doing the right things or not.

It was a real eye-opener to have her walk through the house and property. Some items on the proposed list of improvements that we thought would be worth more $$ in resale were totally irrelevant. Other items we didn't even have on our list, she recommended doing as soon as we could.

The biggest takeaway we got from her was the mantra of CONSISTENCY. If you are going to over-improve your house, then everything visible MUST be all at the same quality level. She said a buyer's eye goes to the cheapest thing in a room and everything else is priced accordingly.

This really helped my DH understand that everything visible we do, is better off kept within the same general range as all the other things about the house.

As a result, our periodic and regular discussions on "next item on the maintenance/improvements house list" are always in the context of "does this fit in with everything else?" You don't want one thing to "stick out" about your house in a starter home, unless it's the overall look of having been well-maintained.

There are certain things we have done that we know we may not recoup full value at resale. But those are specific things that appeal to us as we live in the house; e.g., they increase our enjoyment on an everyday basis.

I can totally understand your DH's impulses. I love to cook, so even though my kitchen is twice as good already as any in the neighborhood, I'm seriously lusting after an $8K Lacanche Cormatin range! This would be incredibly extravagant - I'd need to replace my counters (just replaced recently in 2003), lose an upper cab to put in a much more powerful range hood, and change the venting from horizontal to vertical which means roof work. And much as I love my frameless cabs, they'd look a little shabby next to such an expensive range, so new fronts for them. This would "domino" into replacing the refrig (a very unsexy but quite adequate Amana) for a gorgeous new Leibherr. Getting the Leibherr would require removing yet another upper cab and switching two base cabs, so while I'm at it I might as well have a custom cabinet built to house the new frig.....

Heck, that $8K range won't cost me more than $70K in strictly cosmetic changes by the time I'm done. Mind you, the layout will stay exactly the same, because it works beautifully (since I designed it myself during the original remodel in 1989). So all this is nothing more than window dressing to gussy up the same old kitchen.

GORGEOUS window dressing, yes; but it won't make me any better a cook than if I stuck a Kenmore Elite gas range into the space. And the Kenmore won't require I change everything else out to match as the Lacanche doubtless will.

My sympathies are with your husband, but my head and pocketbook are with you! Remind your DH that house maintenance consists of mostly stuff you HAVE to do, not the pretty stuff you WANT to do. The budget-busters are usually the "have to" items, so it's not wise to overspend on the "want it" items, especially in most markets where RE values are flat or even declining.

There are different grades of vinyl, some of which look fairly good & are in mid-priced type homes.

How long do you plan to own this house? If forever, then buy what you would be happy with. If 1 year & you want to flip it, go with what is standard for the neighborhood.

Does he prefer Hardiplank to vinyl because it is a more robust type product or is it because of the look. From a look's perspective you can get vinyl that looks as good as Hardiplank IMO.

Are you guys doing the labor or will it be hired out as a turn-key job? If you are doing the labor then Hardiplank siding material is relatively cheap at around $1/sq ft. Of course vinyl is cheaper but if you take the labor out of the overall costs then you're probably only talking $1,000 to $2,000 for a starter home average size.

If you are not providing the labor, then some premium vinyls cost about the same as Hardiplank, but the installed cost is still lower because it goes up faster and doesn't need painting.

The link below compares vinyl siding costs to cedar & fiber cement siding. I'm not sure how accurate those would be for your area but from a relative standpoint it might be useful.

http://www.siding4u.com/vinyl-siding-cost-calculator.php?ext_sq_ft=4000&Calculate=Go

Make sure when you do your own cost comparisons you are comparing apples-to-apples i.e. any additional priming, painting, fasteners, trim, soffit, etc you may need for one type siding versus the other.

I wouldn't install fiber cement siding for the payback, but I would install it because I liked the way it looked.

Vinyl can look good when it is new, but it doesn't take time well, and you can't paint it to spruce it up. The fiber cement siding holds paint like a champ, looks like wood siding, won't rot, and will last forever (if installed properly).

There is vinyl on my house and I don't particuarly care for it. It looks OK from the street, but when you get closer, you can tell it's fake.

I know actually where you are coming from. I live in a neighborhood where vinyl siding is considered a plus.We put vinyl on about 7 years ago and it looks as good as when it was done. We did buy premuim vinyl and it was installed well.

How long are you planning to live there? If you plan to be there for 10 years or so and you can comfortably afford it, get what you want within reason.

If you are going to move within 5 years then you might not want to over do it.

Listen to jkom51! Our 'starter' home was in a small 1950's development of about 40 homes. A realtor/neighbor came to our rescue when we were remodeling. We'd already replaced all the windows and blown in insulation and were considering re-remodeling the kitchen.

She said starter home buyers seldom care if the windows are high quality. (We didn't care because they'd improved our comfort in the home.) She nixed the idea of tile for the kitchen and back hall or granite for the countertops. So, we replaced the laminate floor and countertops with same. We lived there a few more years and got top dollar when we sold -- to buyers who did a teardown! Our LOT was where the value was in the end.

Our next door neighbors over-improved their home, nearly doubling the size, but still stuck with the teeny kitchen, LR, DR. They lost a lot when they finally sold. Nobody wanted this half-new, half-old, biggest-house-in-the-neighborhood.

With Energy prices going sky high, I would think the improvements that would pay off in any home,even a starter home now-a-days would be things that lower your heating and cooling bills. These kind of improvements will pay off when you go to sell. Just pull out the heating and electric bills and have any prospective buyer compare them to a similar house bills. I would think that would cap the deal.

I think the primary question is "how long do you plan of living there?".
We are hoping to grow very old in our current house, and when the fascia needed to be replaced, we went with Hardi. I'm hoping we never have to replace it again.