Ahead of Us Research
A home does not send one tidy monthly bill for everything it will need. The work arrives in different shapes, at different prices, and usually on the home’s schedule—not ours.
2023 American Housing Survey · U.S. owner-occupied homes · improvement activity reported for 2021–2023
The national picture
During the 2021–2023 reporting period, 51.6 million homeowners—59%—reported making improvements. Among households that did, the median total was $6,500.
That does not mean every household spent $6,500, or that the work was all urgent. It means the “after closing” part of homeownership is big enough to plan for—and varied enough to resist one magic rule.
The house wakes up
Roofs, heating, cooling, windows, plumbing, kitchens, bathrooms, floors, and yards do not age as one unit. The survey captures repairs, replacements, additions, and remodeling—not one predictable maintenance bill.
The useful question is less “What will my house cost?” and more “What kinds of uneven costs should our plan be able to absorb?”
Finding 1
The published median for roofing was $10,000. Plumbing fixtures were $500. Kitchen and bathroom remodels sat between them. One percentage-of-home-value rule blurs exactly the differences that make planning useful.
These are medians among reported projects—not quotes, forecasts, or suggested budgets for your home.
Finding 2
Nearly half of plumbing-fixture projects were primarily done by someone in the household. For roofing and central air, it was closer to one in seven and one in nine.
This is not a dare to do more yourself. It is evidence that labor, skills, safety, and the kind of job matter.
Finding 3
About three quarters of reported projects were paid primarily from savings. Credit cards, insurance, home equity, refinancing, contractor financing, and other sources made up the rest.
A reserve can create options. The data also reminds us that plenty of households met a real project without one perfect pile of cash waiting.
Finding 4
Home age changes the context, but the national estimates do not form a simple staircase where every older era means higher spending. Homes built from 2000–2009 had the highest median improvement total in this broad comparison.
Condition, prior work, location, systems, and the people living there still matter. A build year cannot inspect a house for you.
What to carry forward
You do not need to forecast the exact month a water heater quits or pretend every remodel is an emergency. A more human plan leaves some room for the house to be a house: useful, imperfect, changing, and part of the life happening inside it.
The goal is not to know every future bill. It is to give the future more than one way to work.
Explore your household runway →The numbers behind the story
The American Housing Survey is sponsored by HUD and conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. The published headline figures come from the Census Bureau’s disclosure-reviewed 2023 Home Improvements infographic. Custom comparisons use the national public-use file with full and replicate survey weights.
| Project | Median reported cost |
|---|---|
| Roofing | $10,000 |
| Kitchen remodel | $8,000 |
| HVAC | $5,500 |
| Bathroom remodel | $5,000 |
| Flooring, paneling, or ceiling tiles | $3,000 |
| Doors or windows | $2,800 |
| Electrical wiring or fuse boxes | $1,000 |
| Water heater, dishwasher, or garbage disposal | $800 |
| Plumbing fixtures | $500 |
Primary funding source among owner projects in the national public-use file. A small share did not report a source; it stays visible rather than being silently redistributed.
| Primary source | Share | 90% margin |
|---|---|---|
| Savings | 75.7% | ±0.8 |
| Credit or store card | 6.3% | ±0.4 |
| Other | 5.1% | ±0.3 |
| Insurance settlement | 3.9% | ±0.3 |
| Home-equity loan | 3.0% | ±0.4 |
| Cash-out refinance | 2.3% | ±0.3 |
| Contractor financing | 1.9% | ±0.2 |
| Not reported | 1.8% | ±0.2 |
“Improvements” includes repairs, replacements, additions, and remodeling reported for the prior two years or since move-in when shorter. Project estimates use the linked owner household’s survey weight. Margins use all 160 replicate weights and the official AHS factor of 4/160. Dollar medians use projects with reported nonnegative costs; missing amounts are not treated as zero.
Home-vintage groups are broad national comparisons. They do not adjust for condition, geography, household choices, earlier renovations, or other differences between homes.
The exact source manifest, hashes, aggregate output, and deterministic extraction script are checked into the Ahead of Us repository. No respondent-level records ship with this page.
Ahead of Us is building a shared household-money app for the plans, projects, and lives that never fit neatly into one month.