A new report says the typical home in the country is 44 years old and needs “tons of work.”
As new home construction continues to stagnate and offer fewer opportunities for builders, contractors and others in the trade, the stock of aging homes in America could be a big source of projects as we advance.
The Wall Street Journal, citing statistics from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing, reports the age of the median home in the country is a record 44 years.
“A home-construction boom sprouted across America in the roaring 1920s,” the Journal wrote. “Millions more single-family units went up across suburbia after World War II. Building surged again in the 1970s. Now those homes are old, and more recent new construction hasn’t replaced America’s graying housing stock.
“The typical house is well past the age when the roof needs repairs and the furnace needs replacing. The extent of maintenance and modernization needs is vast, and the cost of doing it is going up fast.”
How much are those costs going up? Structural repair costs grew by about 14 percent in real terms between 2022 and 2024, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
“You’re not just buying an older home, you’re buying a maintenance schedule,” Brian Werner, a financial planner in Pittsburgh, told the Journal. Those costs represent enormous opportunities for those in the building trade. In 2023, homeowners in the U.S. spent an average of $9,030 on replacement projects such as windows, up 59 percent from 2009 after adjusting for inflation, the Journal reported.
