Home Renovation Statistics (2026)

US residential improvement spending was $383.8 billion in 2025, according to the Census Bureau's Value of Construction Put in Place survey.

That covers work put in place on existing residential property: additions, alterations and major replacements, not routine maintenance.

It is the third largest line in American housing after new single-family construction at $423.4 billion, and it is larger than all new multifamily construction combined at $116.2 billion.

Improvements were 41.6% of the $923.4 billion of private residential construction put in place in 2025.

The gap against new single-family construction has closed steadily: $98.4 billion in 2022, $69.7 billion in 2023, $62.1 billion in 2024 and $39.6 billion in 2025.

On the current trajectory the two lines converge, which would make improving the existing housing stock as large an activity as adding to it.

The mechanism is the same rate lock that shows up in the HELOC data: a household holding a mortgage well below the current market rate has a strong reason not to move.

Not moving turns a housing need into a renovation project, because the alternative to another bedroom is a house that costs more to finance rather than more to buy.

That is why the two series diverged rather than moving together, and it is a rate story rather than a preference story.

Improvement spending dropped from $354.8 billion in 2022 to $330.7 billion in 2023, a 6.8% fall, before recovering to $371.2 billion and then $383.8 billion.

Renovation is discretionary in a way new construction is not, so it responds faster to a change in confidence or in the cost of borrowing.

That volatility is worth remembering when reading a single year: this series moves both ways more sharply than the housing totals it sits inside.

Census publishes an improvements figure annually. The monthly construction spending release reports a combined "Residential (including improvements)" line with only new single family and new multifamily broken out separately.

In June 2026 that combined residential figure was $877.1 billion at a seasonally adjusted annual rate, down 4.7% year over year, with new single family at $408.9 billion and new multifamily at $114.8 billion.

An improvements figure can be inferred by subtraction, and this page does not report one, because a monthly residual moves for reasons that include revisions to the lines it is derived from.

Home improvement is frequently framed as an investment, and the framing is misleading in a specific way: most projects return less than they cost when the house is sold.

The reliable exception is work that fixes a defect rather than adding a feature, because a buyer prices a roof that needs replacing very directly and prices a new kitchen much less directly.

The honest framing is consumption that partially retains value, which is a perfectly good reason to do it and a poor basis for expecting a return.

Capital improvements add to the cost basis of a home, which reduces the taxable gain when it is sold. Repairs and maintenance do not.

For most sellers this is irrelevant, because the exclusion on gain from a primary residence covers the whole gain. For anyone whose gain might exceed it, receipts kept over decades are what make the basis defensible.

That is the one piece of renovation record-keeping worth doing prospectively rather than reconstructing later, and it costs nothing at the time.

The financing pattern follows the same rate logic as the spending pattern. Cash-out refinancing reprices the whole mortgage and is unattractive to a household with a low fixed rate.

That pushes renovation onto home equity lines of credit, which price only the new borrowing, and onto credit cards and contractor financing for smaller projects.

HELOC balances have now risen for seventeen consecutive quarters, which is the borrowing side of the story this spending series tells.

Renovation costs overrun more reliably than almost any other household project, because the scope is discovered during the work rather than specified before it.

The standard planning response is a contingency of a meaningful fraction of the budget, held in cash rather than assumed to be available on a credit line.

A project financed to the last dollar has no way to absorb the discovery that the wiring needs replacing, and that is the specific moment renovation debt becomes expensive.

A country improving its existing stock rather than adding to it is not increasing the number of homes, whatever it spends.

$383.8 billion of improvement spending produces better housing for people who already have it, and no additional supply for people who do not.

That is the structural point behind the number: renovation spending and housing affordability are close to unrelated, and the first rising does nothing for the second.

The C30 survey measures the value of construction put in place, meaning work actually performed during the period, not permits issued or contracts signed.

Figures are in current dollars and are not adjusted for price changes, so part of the growth in this series is construction cost inflation rather than more work being done.

Monthly figures are seasonally adjusted annual rates and are revised; the annual figures used for the improvements series here are the published annual values.

Annual improvements, new single family, new multifamily and total residential figures are from the Census Bureau's annual private construction table in the Value of Construction Put in Place survey, covering 2022 to 2025.

The monthly figures are from the Monthly Construction Spending release for June 2026, release number CB26-126.

The gap and share columns are our arithmetic on the published Census figures and are labelled as such.