Inflation Slows in Home Services, but Aging Homes and Extreme Weather Continue to Drive Up Costs
Jack Erb•Thumbtack's Economist •Last updated Oct 10, 2024
Last updated Oct 10, 2024
Each quarter, we release new data from our Home Care Price Index\*, an estimate of the annual cost to maintain a home in cities across the country. We calculate this based on data from more than one million home projects that are essential to keep your home running smoothly and avoid costly repairs.
According to our research, in Q3‘24 the average cost to maintain a single family home each year increased to $10,433 — up 5.9% year-over-year. Although costs continue to rise, they have slowed quarter-over-quarter compared to Q2’24 (1.7% vs 2.47% respectively).
We also took a look at how maintenance costs are changing across different categories. Here’s what we found.
Aging homes and climate change are driving up costs.
The median age of homes in the U.S. is currently 43 years-old, driving more costly and complex repairs and maintenance due to older systems, neglected maintenance, and supply chain issues.
In addition to aging homes, heat waves have resulted in AC repairs and maintenance (+14.62%), seeing the biggest increase in cost year-over-year, followed by heating system repairs and maintenance (+14.43%). Pest control services (+13.06%), gutter cleaning and maintenance (+12.03%), and irrigation system repairs and maintenance (+11.48%) also saw double-digit increases year-over-year.
And although 17 out of the 19 essential home projects saw increases, most were relatively small, with 6 categories rising less than 5% year-over-year. Duct and vent cleanings and water heater maintenance and repairs even saw slight decreases in cost (-4.05% and -0.43% respectively YoY).
U.S. cities continue to see increases across the board.
We also looked at the average cost of home maintenance in the largest 30 metropolitan areas in the U.S. This past quarter, 27 out of those 30 metros experienced a year-over-year increase in costs.
San Francisco saw the largest spike (+17.24% YoY) in prices year-over-year, bringing the annual cost of home maintenance to $12,261. Atlanta (up 11.43% YoY, bringing costs to $11,730) and Detroit (up 10.31% YoY, bringing costs up to $10,949) were the two other cities that saw double-digit increases.
On the other end of the spectrum, Washington, DC saw a 2.96% decrease in annual home maintenance costs, alongside Los Angeles (down 2.41% YoY) and Chicago (down 2.24% YoY).
Costs are lower in states with higher job creation.
In the past five years, Texas and Florida, have been responsible for more than half of the nation’s jobs created, fostering a more competitive market. Both Texas and Florida dominate the list of cities where it is least expensive to maintain a home:
Meanwhile, states like California, New York, Washington and Massachusetts are among the bottom 10 states, and have seen the lowest job creation numbers. Coupled with a higher cost of living, makes it no surprise that these states have some of the most expensive cities to maintain a home:
Homeowners should expect continued cost variability.
As homeowners budget for annual home maintenance, it’s important to keep long term and short term variables in mind, such as climate change and supply chain issues, which can impact annual costs. For example, prices for residential construction building materials have accelerated since the beginning of 2024, leaving home pros to deal with higher supply costs. Additionally, August 2024 was the hottest in history in NOAA’s 175-year climate record, putting added stress on home systems and increasing demand for AC repairs and maintenance. As these variables continue to impact when and by how much costs change as they make their way to consumers, we can expect to see continued unpredictable fluctuations in home maintenance, improvements and repair costs in the future.
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Methodology: The Home Care Price Index incorporates Thumbtack categories that are deemed essential annual tasks for home maintenance, taking into account the frequency with which projects need to be completed. We also added additional maintenance projects to create a more in-depth picture of best practices for home maintenance.
Pricing data is based on over 2.7 million projects requested on Thumbtack between January 1, 2022 and September 30, 2024 reported directly by the independent service professional or individual customer. The cost is a weighted index of home maintenance projects, based on recommended yearly frequency, on a quarterly basis using a moving average. Outliers were removed if the reported price was 3x the standard deviation from the mean within each individual category. Regional reporting is based on the pricing data for requests in that specific geographic area. For regional data, if there were not enough pricing estimates for a specific category, national averages were used instead.
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