Home repair costs jump 76% in a decade

Home improvement and repair costs have escalated in price in the last decade, adding to the strain of tight budgets for Americans, a new analysis finds.

The median cost of a home improvement project has risen 76.1% from 2015 to 2025, from $1,200 to an inflation-adjusted $2,113, according to a LendingTree analysis.

"Home improvement costs are increasing so much in part because the price of most anything is going up. The cost of labor and building is likely playing a big role," Matt Schulz, LendingTree chief consumer finance analyst, told USA TODAY.

Homeowners are making repairs, not moving

Homeowners are staying in their homes longer rather than moving and with that come repairs and upgrades, said Schulz.

"Plenty of families feel stuck because they have a house that doesn't meet their current needs but a mortgage rate that is far lower than what they'd get today. They simply can't bring themselves to trade their 3% rate for a 7% rate, so they're staying put. That isn't likely to change anytime soon, unfortunately," he said.

Routine maintenance on owner-occupied homes is an estimated $1,433 a year on average, but that amount rises to $1,706 annually for homes built before 1940. New properties are the cheapest to maintain, with costs falling to three figures for homes built in 2015 and later, LendingTree said. Houses built from 2022 to 2023 cost $173 on average to maintain.

Sixty-four percent of the projects analyzed were completed by a professional, with the median project costing an estimated $4,103. That's compared to $845 spent on a DIY project.

LendingTree analyzed U.S. Census Bureau American Housing Survey and U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data for its analysis.

What types of projects are homeowners taking on?

Nearly 6 in 10 owner-occupied homes, or 51.6 million of the nation's 86.9 million owner-occupied properties, underwent some type of improvement during the research's two-year lookback window. There were 139.9 million individual projects, or an average of 2.7 projects per improved home.

But the most common project wasn't a big renovation. The most common single project category was a combined group covering water heaters, dishwashers and garbage disposals, with homeowners adding or replacing appliances in 11.7% of all projects tracked. The median cost was $845.

Schulz said it doesn't surprise him that maintenance and repairs account for the biggest projects.

"Home improvements may be bigger and flashier, but ongoing maintenance and repairs are more common. Most any homeowner can tell you that they just never seem to stop," he said. "They might only cost a few hundred dollars rather than the several thousand dollars people may spend on larger renovations, but they happen so regularly that it can add up to a major financial burden for families."