Flooring and Home Values

LESLIE: Dawn in California, welcome to The Money Pit. How can we help you?

DAWN: I have purchased a product called Alloc Flooring.

TOM and LESLIE: OK.

DAWN: I was wondering – it has a 30-year warranty and I was wondering like what kind of value that would raise for my house appraisal and do I need to seal it in any way because it’s going to be in the kitchen and the bath.

TOM: Well first of all, in terms of return on investment, any good-quality flooring is going to probably give you the same return on investment. I don’t think that that’s the kind of thing that you can necessarily, though, peg with a specific number. If it was a room improvement like adding a kitchen, adding a bathroom or even adding a deck or a patio, it’s easier to figure out how much the return on investment that will give you because there are actually studies that are done on that every year. But just, obviously, maintaining your house is a good idea because it does maintain the value of your house.

Now, in terms of the laminate floor, it’s an excellent choice for the kitchen and the bathroom because it’s a very, very durable, water-resistant finish. There’s nothing to seal. It’s basically the same kind of laminate that we’ve used for years on countertop, with one key difference. It’s about 30 times more durable than the laminate used as a countertop. There’s a test called a taber abrasion test where they rotate these grinding disks into the laminate surface to make sure it’s thick enough and this test for the laminate floor is about 30 times tougher than the same test for the countertop. So same technology but just a lot thicker and it can look a lot better because, obviously, on a floor you can choose – anything you can photograph you can make a laminate floor out of. So I think it’s a good choice all the way around.

DAWN: Thank you.