Does the luxury renovation have to be to current taste or just to current quality

verity, the split is real but I'd argue taste and speed aren't as connected as your first case assumes.

I've sat in the passive seat on two of these and read the marketing packages both times. The one that sold in seven weeks had a very safe finish package and immaculate mechanicals, and the agent's whole pitch was that nothing needed doing for ten years. The one that took eleven months had a bold designer palette that got written up in a local magazine, and the feedback that came back through the agent, repeatedly, was that buyers loved it and wanted to change the kitchen.

Two deals is nothing statistically. But it made me stop believing that fashionable equals fast.

Neutral doesn't mean cheap and I think that's where this argument gets muddy. You can spend 900k being neutral. Plaster, real millwork, proper HVAC zoning, none of that is a taste decision and all of it is expensive.

So I'd vote quality, but I want to be clear that voting quality is not voting for a smaller budget.

Running a service business I deal with the finish end of this constantly and the thing clients underestimate is that taste has a maintenance cost the buyer can smell.

Unlacquered brass that's going to patina, an all-matte fixture package that shows every fingerprint, an integrated appliance suite where one panel is discontinued in three years. Buyers at that level often own other homes and they've been burned. When they ask what's the warranty on this and what happens when the panel breaks, a bold package generates more questions than a plain one, and every question is days on market.

Doesn't mean go beige. Means every fashionable choice should survive someone asking who services it.

I'm mostly here for the paper side and I understand about half of this thread, but canton's point about the magazine house taking eleven months made me actually laugh.

There's a third thing under both of your categories, verity, and it's the one I'd spend on first.

The things you can't change later. Ceiling height, window openings, where the light falls, how the plan flows, whether the primary suite looks at the neighbor's garage. Nobody reno'ing a luxury house should be picking cabinet pulls before they've decided whether to move a wall or add glass, because the pulls are a Tuesday and the wall is the whole deal.

I've held land long enough to watch three cycles of what kitchens are supposed to look like. The houses that held value had good bones and light. The ones that got gutted twice in fifteen years had bad plans and expensive finishes.

orchard is closest to how I've come to think about it, though I get there from a much smaller building.

Every unit I've turned has taught me the same thing at a lower price point. Money in the things a tenant or buyer perceives without naming, water pressure, door weight, how quiet the hallway is, comes back. Money in the specific thing that was fashionable when I bought the materials comes back once and then works against me at the next turn.

What I'd add for the luxury version is that your buyer pool is tiny, so a taste decision doesn't average out across forty prospects the way it does in a rental. If four of your eight realistic buyers dislike the palette, you've halved a pool that was already thin. That asymmetry is why I voted quality even though I think in some markets the fashionable house genuinely does move faster.