Key Takeaway
- The current 2025 Cost vs. Value Report figures: a wood deck recoups 94.9 percent of its cost and a composite deck 88.5 percent. A deck adds real value, just less than it costs.
- Every wildly different number on page one (44, 68, 76, 111 percent) is an older edition of the same report. Nobody updates a page once it ranks.
- Treat the figure as a mood reading, not a measurement. It is real estate agents estimating a hypothetical sale, and it swung 45 points in two years without a single deck changing.
- Wood beats composite at resale (94.9 vs 88.5 percent), and the composite premium recoups only about 71 cents on the dollar. Composite's real case is lower maintenance if you keep the house 15 years.
- If the goal is resale, a garage door (267.7 percent) or steel entry door (216 percent) crushes a deck. Build a deck for the summers you will actually use it.
Google's top results answer with 44 percent, 68 percent, 76 percent, 83 percent, and 111 percent. Every one of those numbers traces to the same annual report. Almost nobody quotes the current edition.
Search how much value a deck adds and the results read like a police lineup where every witness saw a different crime. One decking manufacturer says 44 percent. A competing manufacturer says 68. A patio furniture retailer says at least 76, a realtor blog says 72, and a homebuilder says 83 nationally but 111 in the Pacific states. All of those figures come from the same place: the Cost vs. Value Report, housing research firm Zonda's survey of remodeling returns, now in its 38th annual edition. The sites are quoting different years of it, and mostly not the current one.
The current one says this. In the 2025 edition, the newest available, a wood deck addition costs $18,263 nationally and returns $17,323 at resale, recouping 94.9 percent. A composite deck costs $25,096 and returns $22,199, or 88.5 percent. Those are the strongest deck figures this report has printed in years, and they still mean what every edition has meant. A deck adds real value. It adds less value than it costs.
The current numbers, from the current report
| Project (2025 Cost vs. Value Report) | Job cost | Value at sale | Cost recouped |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wood deck addition | $18,263 | $17,323 | 94.9% |
| Composite deck addition | $25,096 | $22,199 | 88.5% |
Run the subtraction and the romance cools. The wood deck leaves you $940 short at the closing table. The composite deck leaves you $2,897 short. Nationally, by the report's own math, a new deck sheds roughly 5 to 12 percent of its cost the day the sale closes, which puts it closer to a lightly used car than to an investment.
Context flatters those numbers, though. Wood decks ranked eighth of the 28 projects in the 2025 report, ahead of nearly every interior remodel and behind mostly curb-appeal replacements. A backup power generator, in the top ten for the first time, edged out the wood deck by less than half a point at 95.3 percent, and clears 100 percent in storm-prone regions. We ran that math separately in our whole-house generator breakdown. Decks keep good company. They just don't turn a profit.
How much value a deck adds depends on which year you ask
Now for the lineup of witnesses. TimberTech's page leads with 44 percent, a figure built from the 2023 edition's numbers: 50.2 percent for wood, 39.8 for composite. Trex quotes 68 percent, which is the 2024 edition's composite figure. The 111 percent making the rounds is real too, if you squint: Pacific region only, wood only, 2024 edition only. And the boldest claim on page one, a patio furniture retailer asserting decks return at least 76 percent and out-earn every other renovation, is wrong twice over. The current deck figure is 94.9, and garage door replacement recoups 267.7 percent and has held the report's top spot two years running.
The pattern is less spin than inertia. Each of those pages was accurate on its publish date, started ranking, and nobody edits a page that's already ranking. The report refreshes every year whether or not the internet does, so page one has quietly become a museum of whichever edition was current when each site hit publish. Every answer is technically sourced. None of it is current.
The official number swung 45 points in two years
Here's the part that should change how you read any deck ROI statistic, including ours. The same survey put wood decks at 50.2 percent in 2023, 82.9 in 2024, and 94.9 in 2025, a climb of 44.7 points across two editions. Composite jumped from 39.8 to 88.5 over the same stretch. No deck built in 2023 got better. The market's opinion of decks changed.
That's because of what this number actually is. The report's resale values come from surveys of real estate professionals estimating what each project adds to a sale price, paired with job costs from Verisk's XactRemodel estimating data across 115 markets. It's informed expert opinion about a hypothetical sale, not a regression on closed transactions. Zonda's own building products advisor, Todd Tomalak, attributed the 2025 jump to a broad shift in housing demand, comparing it to the 2012 adjustment. The data is useful and assembled in good faith. It is also a mood reading. Anyone reciting deck ROI to one decimal place without naming the edition year is decorating, not measuring.
The $18,263 deck in the report is bigger than yours
One more reason to hold the dollar figures loosely: the report prices a 16-by-20-foot deck addition, 320 square feet with railings and stairs, which works out to about $57 per square foot for wood. If your plan is a 12-by-12 platform off the kitchen door, your bill will be a fraction of the headline number and the resale dollars will shrink with it. The percentage is the transferable part, not the price tag.
Condition and paperwork transfer too. Appraisers credit permitted, code-built structures. An unpermitted deck is something you disclose and negotiate around at closing, not something that gets added to the number, and a sagging one actively costs you. If the deck already exists, a weekend of stain and fresh fasteners protects the value better than any statistic.
Wood beats composite at resale, and resale isn't the whole bill
The current edition settles one argument cleanly: wood recoups 94.9 percent to composite's 88.5, and the gap widens when you price the upgrade itself. Composite runs $6,833 more than wood on the report's spec, about 37 percent extra, and returns only $4,876 more at sale. The composite premium recoups roughly 71 cents on the dollar. Pure resale math says wood.
Resale math is not total-cost math. Wood demands restaining and resealing every few years for as long as you own it; composite mostly demands a hose. Own the house for 15 years and the maintenance line item erodes wood's head start, especially in wet or brutal-sun climates. Composite's case is the years you keep it. Wood's case is the check you write now and the better number when you sell. Selling within five years makes pressure-treated wood the easy call.
Build the deck for the summers, not the sale
A deck remains one of the cheapest ways to add usable living space to a house, and the national line isn't the whole map: the 2025 edition's strongest overall returns came out of the Pacific and West South-Central, outdoor-season country. Build it if you'll use it. Ten summers of cookouts against a $940 paper loss is not a hard decision.
Building it to juice a sale price is a different decision, and the same report answers it. A garage door costs $4,672 and returns $12,507. A steel entry door recoups 216.4 percent. Even a minor kitchen refresh clears its cost at 112.9 percent, and we broke down kitchen remodel costs if that's the route. Every one of those beats a deck at the closing table.
The deck industry will keep selling you 111 percent. The current data says you'll get most of your money back, plus every cookout in between, and the cookouts were always the point. If the sale is the point, put $4,672 into a garage door and pocket the difference. Nobody will compliment it at the barbecue, but nothing on the list pays better on the way out.
