What percentage of the cost of a wine cellar do you get back when you sell your house?

Yes I know, we are in how long is a piece of string territory. So let’s make a few assumptions. Reasonably realistic I think but open to correction.

  1. 700 bottles at $10 a bottle.
  2. Cooling unit $3000
  3. Extras $2500
    Total $12,500

Looks good but not a showpiece.

I have less bottles than you Mark, but they’re valued at 4 - 5 x’s your estimate. neener

You’re making some risky assumptions - e.g. that the buyer really cares for wine and is willing to pay for it. This becomes a bit self-selecting, of course, because in a nice house with a good cellar, you’re probably getting people clicking the link partially because of the cellar.

I personally (naively) would expect something like 30% on the wine, and 50-70% on the cellar hardware?

Probably depends on location, worth more in wine regions and major metro areas. I doubt it adds much unless you get lucky with a buyer that loves the house and wants a wine cellar. Kinda like pools, “essential” in some areas, but a waste of space (and maintenance costs) in other areas.
The $10 per bottle quote is presumably for racking.

Nothing.

2 Likes

I’ve sold two homes with cellars (3,000 and 5,000 bottles respectively) and not sure either buyer cared at all about it. I always build a cellar more for storage (double deep redwood racking) than a show piece so my costs have not been too high. About $5/bottle all in which includes any framing, insulation, cooling, racking and install. Always much better pricing when amortized over a few years vs. any offsite. Plus I have the wine on hand.

As to the converse of the question, does it hurt a sale and I did have one person ask if it can be removed or converted to a regular room.

Anywhere from -50% to +50% depending on the buyer

1 Like

I think you are probably right that it doesn’t add value unless the buyer is a collector.

A friend of mine converted an in-home theatre to a wine cellar, then back to an in-home theatre when he sold the house.

This. No one builds a utilitarian wine cellar to enhance the value of their home.

My thoughts are similar. To perhaps 95%-98% of buyers it’s a negative, in their minds either dead space or requiring extra money to convert into a storage room. But for that 2%-5% it actually increases the value of the home, since the supply of homes with large, fully functioning cellars is low.

Speaking from experience, home theaters don’t always add value, either. Sometimes a buyer sees that as a future bill to rip out all the stuff and convert it into a bedroom.

My parents are long-time luxury residential real estate brokers. When I bought my first (and current) house, I wanted to put in a small wine cellar. They told me not to because it’s too specialized and my goal is to maximize value. If you’re talking about a 15,000 square foot house, a wine cellar might be expected, but that’s about the only time it has some value.

I have sold several clients homes with wine cellars and the potential buyers reaction is almost universally the same. Wow that’s cool! How much is gonna cost to get rid of it? Generally speaking negative value

Depends on if the purchaser is a wineberserker or not.

The weirder thing for me is builders putting wine cellars in spec homes. I can’t imagine it adds much value to them, and for a real collector likely either not big enough or not built for proper storage, or both.

Incidentally, as to Ian’s comment above, I’d really say the same thing about the $100k theatre setups that have become ubiquitous in high-end homes. To some extent it just becomes a question of what do you DO with an extra 3k square foot basement…lot of big houses by me don’t even bother finishing the basements until years after building, if ever.

I agree with most of these takes. I would say that it adds zero to the value of the home and if anything, it probably has a slightly negative affect.

To quote a wise man: “Depends on if the purchaser is a wineberserker or not.”

Existing theatre value = $0.

Future wine cellar value in same space = priceless.

It’s like pools: nobody cares what you paid for it, even if it might be nice to have.

1 Like

It’s going to depend on what the space was converted from. If a bedroom or garage bay was converted into a cellar, it’s probably value destructive to pop in a cellar. If there was a underutilized cellar corner, or laundry closet, then probably not value destroying, but I doubt it adds much.

If you have friends / associates who are real estate brokers familiar with your market, you could get an opinion from them. Brokers are constantly opining on this kind of stuff in my area, deterring people from purple countertops and strange built in appliances.

===========

Pools in my (very hot) region historically added no value, or were even negative value (due to the high cost of maint + insurance surcharge) but during pandemic insanity, they actually became an amenity some households wanted. There is also a big backlog for pool builders (my neighbor just had one installed for his 4 kids, and had to wait 6 mos and pay through the nose) so people at the moment are bidding up for houses which have them. That is anomalous given the history here.

1 Like

One way to test, at least partially - offer to remove the racking and cooling unit before closing (and any moveable “extras” with salvage value). If the buyers say sure, then it has negative value. If they say no, then the value is >0. The cooling unit at a minimum should have value elsewhere, and the racking probably, assuming it can be integrated into a new space.

In my case a negative return. Granted it was a wine cellar in the garage space making it a 1 1/2 car garage. I designed to be (relatively) easy to dismantle if needed, and turns out that was what buyers wanted.

I did re-use all the racking and many other materials for the cellar at my new place so not all lost.