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Q: I am looking to renovate my kitchen, and I’d love to replace my gas range with an induction range. However, I am concerned that when the time comes to sell my apartment in five to 10 years, I will have a harder time selling it since so many people prefer gas. Will induction hurt my resale? Or is induction’s time finally here?
A: Get the stove you want. Any buyer walking into your apartment will probably have all sorts of opinions about the choices you made. They might not like the color of your cabinets, or your aesthetic, or your countertops. They might hate your dishwasher. (But they will be happy that you renovated.)
“You never walk into a space and say, ‘This is exactly how I want it, I wouldn’t change a thing,’” said Tara King-Brown, an associate broker at Corcoran. “All those things are part of the mental gymnastics that buyers have to wrap their head around.”
At the moment, induction is niche, accounting for around 3 percent of ranges or cooktops that Americans use. So odds are, if you sold your apartment tomorrow, a buyer would prefer gas. “There is something glorious about an open flame,” said Ms. King-Brown.
But a buyer is not going to walk away over a second-choice stovetop — if you still have the gas line, someone could always replace the stove with one they want. But with a little education, a reluctant buyer might be persuaded to embrace the technology. It heats food faster than gas and offers significant health and environmental benefits. Already, induction will appeal to buyers concerned about indoor air quality and climate change, since there is a growing body of evidence that it’s not such a great idea to burn fossil fuels in your kitchen.
Regardless, the days of gas are numbered in New York. The city banned gas hookups in new construction beginning in 2024. So, five or 10 years from now, induction stoves will be relatively common, and the people looking at your apartment at that point will likely have seen others with induction stovetops. Yours won’t seem like an outlier — in fact, it will be ahead of its time.
“This is an interesting transformation that we’re going to continue to watch,” said Louise Phillips Forbes, an associate broker with Brown Harris Stevens, comparing the arrival of induction cooktops to electric cars — first they seemed novel, now they’re becoming mainstream. “This is going to be another one of those evolutions.”
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