Key Takeaways
- U.S. home improvement spending has increased 60% since 2019 (from $494B to $790B).
- Americans now spend an average of 1.7% of their household income on routine home maintenance and 11.3% on bigger home improvement projects.
- Routine maintenance costs hit Miami homeowners hardest at 2.4% of the average household income. Milwaukee is the most affordable metro for routine maintenance, with residents spending just 1.1% of their household income.
- Phoenix and Denver homeowners invest most heavily in home improvements, dedicating over 11% of the average household income. Households in Detroit invest the least (6.4%), partly due to their high propensity for DIY.
American spending on home improvements up 60% since 2019
Our homes are central to day-to-day life, with Americans spending an average of 18 hours and 12 minutes at home each day. Moving house? That’s becoming rare. Just 7.8% of Americans relocated in 2023, hitting the lowest moving rate since the 1940s.
This stay-put trend has driven a surge in home improvements.
The number of projects has increased 22% from 113 million in 2019 to 138 million in 2023. Even more striking is the 60% jump in spending, from $494 billion to $790 billion.
These escalating expenses raise an important question: How affordable are home improvements across different U.S. regions?
To answer this, we analyzed data from the latest American Housing Survey.
The American Housing Survey collects data from the top 15 metros in the U.S., plus a selection of other rotating metros. For this study, we looked at 20 metros which were included in both the 2019 and 2023 survey releases.
Residents in Miami spend 2.4% of their household income on routine home maintenance
First, we looked at routine maintenance.
Routine home maintenance – for example, gutter cleaning or basic HVAC maintenance – now costs American households an average of $1,356 per year. This represents 1.7% of a typical household income, up from 1.4% in 2019, when average spend was $931.
Let’s break it down by area.