Home Repair Costs Up 76% in a Decade as Heating Oil Bills Jump 21%

What happened

American homeowners are being squeezed from two directions this fall. Fixing a house costs far more than it used to, and some households will also pay much more to heat theirs. A new LendingTree analysis puts the median cost of a home improvement project at an inflation-adjusted $2,113 in 2025, compared with $1,200 in 2015, an increase of 76.1%21. Two weeks before that report came out, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released its 2026–27 Winter Fuels Outlook. It forecasts that households heating mainly with oil will spend 21% more this winter than last1319.

The two findings come from different data and describe different costs. Together they show that owning a home has become more expensive to keep up, not just to buy. That pressure falls hardest on people who have little room in their budgets, especially those in older housing.

The repair bill: a decade of steady escalation

LendingTree's figures draw on the Census Bureau's American Housing Survey and Bureau of Labor Statistics data24. Most of the coverage repeats the same headline numbers. Matt Schulz, LendingTree's chief consumer finance analyst, said general inflation is part of the story, with labor and building costs likely doing much of the work21. A detail that got less attention is the gap between hiring help and doing the job yourself. Professionals handled 64% of projects, at a median cost of $4,103. Do-it-yourself projects had a median of $84521.

The most useful finding may be about what kinds of work homeowners are doing. The most common single category was not kitchens or additions. It was a grouping of water heaters, dishwashers and garbage disposals, which made up 11.7% of all projects, with a median cost of $84521. Across the two-year window the study covered, 51.6 million of the country's 86.9 million owner-occupied homes had some kind of improvement, totaling 139.9 million projects24. Schulz argued that maintenance and repairs, though less visible than renovations, keep coming back and add up to a real financial burden21.

The age of a home matters a great deal. Routine maintenance averages $1,433 a year across owner-occupied homes. That rises to $1,706 for houses built before 1940 and falls to $173 for homes built in 2022–202321. Most outlets reported these figures the same way. At least one secondary write-up confused the average maintenance figure with a renovation cost, a sign of how easily the numbers can get garbled as they spread27.

Why costs keep climbing

LendingTree describes the trend without explaining much of the cause. Other reporting fills in more of it. A consumer guide from The Zebra, republished by several local broadcasters, points to labor and trade policy2326. It cites survey data showing wages for specialty trade contractors rose about 5% between May 2025 and April 2026, possibly made worse by immigration enforcement23. It also notes that tariffs on steel and aluminum reached 50% in 2025, that some copper imports were later hit with 50% tariffs, and that the National Association of Home Builders found a median 6.7% annual increase in builders' material costs2330.

Research cited by a warranty-industry analysis goes further. According to that paper, the Philadelphia Federal Reserve found that repair costs rose 16.7% between 2022 and 2024, faster than inflation. Plumbing repair costs climbed 31.5% over the same period28. The same paper cites Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS) research showing that the median U.S. home was 44 years old in 2023, the oldest on record28. It also points to Home Improvement Research Institute data showing that fewer homeowners took on projects, but the average spend per project rose 36%, from $3,957 to $5,36828.

That pattern is the important one. Homeowners are not on a renovation spree. They are doing fewer, larger and more urgent jobs. Angi survey data cited in the same paper found that 58% of homeowners call a professional only when something suddenly breaks, and 77% have delayed or scaled back projects because of cost28. A ConsumerAffairs survey found that 67% of homeowners ended up paying more because they waited, and that the average home has nearly $3,200 in repairs still to be done23.

The lock-in effect

The coverage agrees on one structural reason this is happening now. Homeowners are staying put. Schulz described families living in homes that no longer fit their needs because they won't give up a roughly 3% mortgage rate for one near 7%21. He doesn't expect that to change soon21. Staying in place avoids a more expensive mortgage, but the house keeps aging, and owners still have to cover repairs along with insurance, taxes and utilities24.

This also explains why total remodeling spending has stayed flat even as unit costs rise. Harvard's Leading Indicator of Remodeling Activity projected in January that year-over-year growth would slow from 2.9% early in 2026 to 1.6% by year-end, with total homeowner spending reaching about $522 billion25. JCHS managing director Chris Herbert has said remodeling follows the broader housing market and that high rates and weak building-materials sales are holding it back2. A more recent JCHS release says remodeling growth is set to slow sharply in early 2027. Herbert warned that without a sustained rebound in construction, spending is likely to stay in a low-growth range2.

Put those numbers next to LendingTree's and the conclusion is uncomfortable. Overall spending is barely rising while the cost of each job climbs. Homeowners are paying more and getting less work done for it.

The heating side: a split forecast, with oil as the outlier

The energy picture is more mixed than the headlines suggest. In its October 6 outlook, the EIA projects that households heating with natural gas will spend about 9% less this winter, around $640 on average. Propane households are expected to spend about 3% less, around $1,2461219. Electric-heat households, which the agency says make up more than 40% of homes, face about a 4% increase to roughly $1,1961319. The EIA says lower gas and propane prices should reduce bills for the roughly half of U.S. households that use those fuels13.

Heating oil is the exception. The EIA forecasts an average of $5.26 a gallon, 34% higher than last winter, and average household spending of $2,11519. A forecast milder Northeast winter is expected to cut consumption by 9% and soften the impact somewhat1219. Oil heats only about 3% of U.S. homes, mostly in the Northeast13. Those households tend to be in the same older housing stock that costs the most to maintain.

Reports differ somewhat on what is driving the oil spike. The EIA points to rising global distillate prices13. Yahoo Finance tied the climb to disruptions in oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz and noted that the EIA raised its fourth-quarter Brent crude forecast to $105 a barrel19. Energy News Beat added tight distillate markets, reduced refining and East Coast inventories 32% below the five-year seasonal average in September14. The Economic Times linked the refining shortfall to the U.S.–Iran conflict16. These explanations fit together more than they conflict. Each describes a supply shock passing through refined products to the households that burn them.

The forecasts themselves vary more. One consumer site, citing September EIA data, gave a lower price range of $4.20–$4.80 a gallon18. The agency's October outlook is higher. Weekly survey prices already topped $6 a gallon in early October, with New York at $6.2312. Readers should rely on the October federal figures. Regional differences matter too. The Hill reported that a colder forecast for the West could raise natural gas and electricity bills there by about 7% and 9%17. The EIA also warns that an El Niño pattern could push temperatures well away from its base case19.

Why it matters

These should be read as one story about household budgets, not two separate consumer notes. The same homes that are expensive to heat often need replacement furnaces, water heaters and plumbing. Deferring that work makes later repairs more expensive and can also complicate insurance. The Insurance Information Institute's Janet Ruiz noted that insurers cover sudden losses, not damage from neglect, and that serious deferred maintenance can make it harder to get or renew coverage23.

How homeowners pay for all this also points to strain. Cash covered 75.7% of projects in LendingTree's data, and home equity loans were typically used only for larger jobs21. As long as households have savings, the system works. Owners with thin savings, aging homes and oil furnaces have little cushion if their heating system fails in January.

The outlook is not good. Remodeling growth is slowing, tariff and labor pressures have not eased, and heating oil prices depend on geopolitics. Natural gas households will get some relief this winter. For many others, keeping a house running will take a larger share of income than it did a decade ago, and nothing in the current data suggests that trend is about to reverse.