This brief examines U.S. housing repair data, revealing that the estimated cost for repairs to occupied housing units reached $198.4 billion in 2024. Lower-income households were disproportionately affected, representing 37.6 percent of total costs despite comprising just 29 percent of occupied units.
The analysis uses data from the American Housing Survey (AHS) and a custom data set from the construction cost estimation firm Gordian. Direct comparison of total costs over time is complicated owing to changes in data availability. However, the estimated costs of the repair needs that are consistently tracked increased, up 13.3 percent in inflation-adjusted terms from 2022 to 2024. While the number of households reporting these repair needs grew slightly, the overall increase was primarily driven by increases in the costs of repair interventions.
Cooling repairs, which are captured for the first time in this update, accounted for 9 percent of total repair costs in 2024. The inclusion of cooling repair needs improves our understanding of housing quality issues impacting lower-income households, renters, and residents of multifamily structures. These households are disproportionately likely to report these types of repair needs.
- Technical Appendix: This appendix provides an in-depth description of the methodology used to develop the repair cost estimates.
- Data Appendix: Outlines estimated home repair needs cost and prevelance by geographic area.
- Appendix Table: Specifies the home repair needs examined in the report and details the corresponding repairs.