Overall, the "cost recouped" results are down this year (no shock given the market declines on the national level), but what is surprising is that they weren't down further.  From the complete article:

The results of the 2008–09 Cost vs. Value Report are surprising. A sluggish real estate market, and an increasing number of foreclosures while our survey was in the field this summer, led us to expect that the ratio of a remodeling project’s cost to the value it retains at resale would drop substantially more than the 8.02% (6.1 points) decline experienced in 2007.

What the 2008–09 data show, however, is a slowdown in the decline of the average cost-value ratio across all projects to only 3.86%, just 2.7 points down from 2007 (see “Percentage Recouped at Resale” graph).

Even with a mild (2.67%) increase in 2007 construction costs, it seems likely that if house values were plummeting as far and as fast as media reports would have us believe, the Cost vs. Value results should have been much worse. Instead, these results suggest that instances of steep home-value depreciation occurring in some parts of the country, particularly those with widespread foreclosures, have led to conclusions about the weakening of the overall existing home market that, while certainly not unfounded, could be exaggeratedInteresting take on things....and one that I agree with (to a point).  Foreclosure ridden areas are certainly on the forefront of the market in terms of driving national prices