Average Home Service Spending Jumps $4,000 in 2020

HomeAdvisor’s 2020 home spending report found that average household spending increased more than $4,000 compared to last year. The home services digital marketplace reported an average of $9,081 spent per household last year on home services and $13,138 this year. Even before the pandemic, HomeAdvisor predicted a robust year for home service spending. Increased material and labor costs due to the pandemic could be to blame for the jump in spending. Some specific project types, such as maintenance on landscaping and cleaning, increased the most compared to last year. 

What fueled this boost in spending and projects?
This year’s topline growth in spending and projects is a story of both increasing costs of supplies, increasing cost of professional labor and homeowners shifting spending from things like entertainment and travel to their homes. While the cost to do projects compared to last year did increase, we also found that homeowners were spending more as well.

The acceleration of home buying this year and underlying drivers of consumer spending like shifting demographics, baby boomers renovating to age-in-place, Millennials changing layouts to raise their growing families, a greater cultural focus on home design and home entertainment, an aging housing stock and a shortage of new home construction – among many other fundamental factors – were already resulting in more spending on home improvement, home maintenance, and home emergency repair and also continued this year.

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