Home Services Marketing Statistics 2026: Market Size, Reviews and Lead Costs

Home services is one of the largest consumer markets that almost nobody measures properly. Money moves through it in cash, in bank transfers to sole traders with no website, and a large share of it never touches a platform at all.

That makes the data unusually interesting. Official statistics tell you how big the pot is. Marketplace filings tell you how much of it has moved online. Consumer surveys tell you what a homeowner looks at in the ninety seconds before deciding who gets the call.

Put those three next to each other and 2026 looks like a market where demand is holding up, digital penetration is still shallow, and the cost of buying a homeowner's attention is rising faster than the value of the job.

Key home services marketing statistics for 2026

• UK private housing repair and maintenance output hit £35.4bn in 2025, up 4.1% on 2024, per the Office for National Statistics [1]
• UK households spent £11.90 a week each on maintenance and repair of the dwelling in the year to March 2025, £343m a week in total, per ONS Family Spending [2]
• US home improvement and repair spending is projected at $519bn through mid-2027, with year-on-year growth slowing to 0.5% by Q2 2027, on the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies LIRA measure [3]
• Median US renovation spend held at $20,000 in 2025, but median planned spend for 2026 dropped to $15,000, per the 2026 Houzz & Home Study of 10,176 renovating homeowners [5]
• 93% of US homeowners planning work in 2026 expect to hire at least one professional, and 25% expect difficulty finding one, according to the Houzz Renovation Plans Report [6]
• Angi told the SEC consumers used its businesses for roughly 16 million projects in the year to December 2025, whilst stating "the vast majority of consumers" still hire offline [9]
• Angi spent 49% of its total 2025 revenue on selling and marketing, $507.5m against $1.03bn of revenue [9]
• 47% of consumers will not use a business with fewer than 20 reviews, and 74% want to see reviews written in the last three months, per the BrightLocal Local Consumer Review Survey 2026 [12]
• Only 8% of consumers begin a local business search on an AI tool, against 52% on Google Search, in BrightLocal's July 2026 channels study [13]
• Average cost per lead for paid search in Home & Home Improvement is $90.92, against a $66.69 cross-category average, on LocaliQ's 2026 benchmarks [15]

How big is the home services market in 2026?

Bigger than most trade operators assume. The UK number that matters is private housing repair and maintenance output, which the ONS puts at £35.4bn for 2025. The US equivalent, measured differently, runs above half a trillion dollars.

ONS construction output data shows private housing repair and maintenance rose from £31.1bn in 2023 to £34.0bn in 2024 and £35.4bn in 2025 [1]. That is 15.3% of all Great Britain construction output, which totalled £231.8bn in 2025.

In the US, the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies projects annual homeowner improvement and repair spending of $519bn through mid-2027, with growth decelerating to 0.5% year on year by the second quarter of 2027 [3]. The Center's Improving America's Housing 2025 report notes that the remodeling market "soared above $600 billion in the wake of the pandemic and remains 50 percent above pre-pandemic levels" [4].

The gap between those two US figures is not an error. LIRA measures owner-occupied improvement and maintenance; the wider $600bn framing includes rental work. Check the definition before quoting a market size at anyone. The UK series carries its own lesson: repair and maintenance grew whilst new-build private housing barely moved.

How much are homeowners actually spending per job?

The median is far lower than the industry implies, and averages are dragged up by a small tail of very large projects. Median US renovation spend was $20,000 in 2025, whilst the 90th percentile hit $150,000.

The 2026 Houzz & Home Study, based on 10,176 renovating US homeowners, found 54% renovated in 2025, 52% decorated and 47% carried out repairs [5]. Median spend held steady at $20,000 and the 90th percentile rose 7% to $150,000. Intent is softer: 50% plan projects in 2026, down from 52%, and median planned spend fell to $15,000.

In the UK, the average household spent £11.90 a week on maintenance and repair of the dwelling in the year to March 2025, of which £1.40 went on central heating repairs and £7.80 on house maintenance [2]. Across all households that is £343m a week, or roughly £17.8bn a year on our own arithmetic. That sits well below the £35.4bn construction output figure, because output includes landlord and insurer-funded work.

How do homeowners find and shortlist a provider?

Mostly through Google, on a phone, using more than one source, and with a strong pull back towards personal recommendation. AI is present but nowhere near dominant.

BrightLocal's July 2026 channels study of 1,227 US consumers found 52% started their most recent local search on Google Search, 9% on Google Maps, 9% on social media and 8% on an AI tool [13]. 73% searched on a mobile device. 75% used more than one channel before deciding.

23% used AI at some point, but only 2% used it exclusively, 43% went back to Google to verify what it told them, and only 18% felt ready to contact a business off the back of an AI recommendation [13].

Angi's 10-K is blunter than any survey. It tells investors that "our biggest competition comes from the traditional methods most people currently use to find Pros, which are by word-of-mouth and through referrals" [9]. A business with $1.03bn of revenue naming word of mouth as its main competitor is the most honest line in the category.

The practical read is that you are not competing for a search result so much as for the moment after the recommendation. Someone gets your name from a neighbour, then checks you. If there is nothing to check, you lose.

What they want from the professional is unglamorous. Houzz's 2025 Remodeling and Relationships Report, covering 541 couples who had recently renovated, found 45% wanted transparent pricing, 42% clearer communication and 39% more accurate timelines [8].

How much do reviews and photos actually matter?

Reviews matter more than anything else, and the thresholds have tightened sharply in a single year. Photos matter less than the industry believes, but their absence is still a rejection trigger.

The BrightLocal Local Consumer Review Survey 2026, based on 1,002 US adults, found 41% "always" read reviews, up from 29% in 2025 [12]. 47% will not use a business with fewer than 20 reviews. 68% now require a minimum of four stars, up from 55% a year earlier, and 31% want 4.5 or better, up from 17%. On recency, 74% look for reviews written in the last three months and 32% want reviews from the last two weeks, up from 20%.

On photos, BrightLocal's decisions study of 1,227 consumers found high-quality photos were a deciding factor for 18% when choosing who to contact, and 24% during earlier research [14]. Absent photos caused 16% to reject a business. Complete information such as hours, address and phone was the top factor at 32%, ahead of review quality at 30% and clear pricing at 29%.

That asymmetry is the useful bit. Photos rarely win the job, but missing photos quietly lose it. The same goes for an unanswered review: 80% of consumers are more likely to use a business that responds to all reviews, and 50% say a templated response makes them less likely to [12].

How fast do homeowners expect a response?

Faster than most trade businesses can manage, and the expectation is compressing year on year. Same-day is moving from a nice touch to the baseline.

On review responses, 19% of consumers now expect a same-day reply, up from 6% in 2025, and 81% expect one within a week [12]. Quick response time was a decision factor for 22% of consumers choosing who to contact [14].

Checkatrade's framing of its Express booking product shows where platforms think the bar sits: a process that "might have once taken around three days" is something Express lets a homeowner do "in 3 minutes" [17].

The caveat is real. Almost all published speed-to-lead data comes from vendors selling speed-to-lead software, and the well-known studies claiming dramatic conversion drops after five minutes date to the early 2010s. Treat the direction as solid and the multipliers as marketing.

Are homeowners booking online or still phoning?

Online booking is growing from a low base, and platforms are pushing hard at it, but most hiring still happens through conversation rather than checkout.

Angi's 10-K states plainly that "the digital penetration of the home services market remains low, with the vast majority of consumers continuing to search for, select and hire Pros offline" [9]. That is a risk-factor disclosure, written to be defensible.

Both major marketplaces spent 2026 building conversational front doors rather than booking flows. Angi launched an app inside ChatGPT in March 2026, reporting that AI Helper users are three times more likely to request quotes than traditional browsers, and 25% more likely to report a successfully completed project [11]. Checkatrade launched its own ChatGPT app in April 2026 [16].

Those Angi figures are self-selection as much as causation. People who engage with an assistant were probably closer to hiring anyway. Still, three times the quote request rate is worth testing on your own site.

What are the marketplaces actually delivering?

Volumes are falling at the largest listed player, and the pro base is shrinking faster than consumer demand. Angi is the only home services marketplace publishing audited numbers.

Source: Angi Inc. 10-K for the year ended 31 December 2025 [9]

The second quarter of 2026 continued the pattern: revenue down 11% to $248.0m, US service requests down 6% to 4.31 million, US leads down 13% to 4.84 million, and average monthly active pros down 17% to 106,000 [10].

Much of the decline is deliberate. Angi implemented what it calls "homeowner choice" in January 2025, letting consumers pick which professionals contact them rather than being matched to several. Network revenue fell 72% whilst proprietary revenue rose 17% [9].

That is the most important structural fact in the sector this year. A marketplace voluntarily destroyed $270m of annual revenue to stop selling the same homeowner to four trades. Its retreat shows how much lead quality now matters relative to volume.

What does it cost to acquire a home services customer?

More than in almost any other local category. Paid search leads in home improvement cost roughly 36% more than the cross-category average.

Source: LocaliQ search advertising benchmarks, 2026 [15]

Marketplace economics point the same way. Angi's US proprietary revenue of $800.6m against 17.9 million proprietary leads works out at roughly $45 per lead on our own calculation [9]. In Q2 2026, Angi spent $95.1m on US consumer marketing to produce $215.4m of US revenue, so 44 cents of every dollar went straight back into buying homeowners [10].

Read those together and the picture is uncomfortable. A marketplace with a national brand and a billion dollars of revenue still spends about half its top line acquiring demand, whilst a single trade buying the same demand through Google Ads pays about $91 per lead before quoting anything. The escape route is the one Angi names as its biggest competitor: referral, repeat work and reviews are the only channels here with a declining marginal cost.

How seasonal is home services demand?

Meaningfully, and not in the pattern most people assume. UK repair and maintenance spend peaks in autumn, not midsummer, and troughs in January.

Source: ONS construction output, current prices, non-seasonally adjusted [1]

October 2025 output was 30% above January 2025, and Q3 ran 12.9% ahead of Q1. That is a wide enough swing to justify moving a meaningful share of annual marketing budget out of the first quarter.

On the supply side, Houzz Pro's Q3 2026 barometer of 424 US construction firms put project backlog at 6.1 weeks nationally, unchanged year on year, with the inquiries indicator at 61, up four points on Q2 [7]. A homeowner enquiring today waits about six weeks. That is a marketing problem as much as a capacity one.

How to read these numbers

Construction output and household expenditure are survey-based official estimates, revised regularly. ONS monthly construction figures in particular are revised for months after first publication, so treat recent months as provisional.

Marketplace metrics come from audited filings, so they describe that company reliably. They do not describe the market. Angi's declining lead volumes reflect a deliberate strategy change as well as any demand shift, and no other major marketplace publishes comparable numbers.

The consumer surveys are US panels of roughly 1,000 to 1,200 people, self-reported and recalled after the fact. People are poor at remembering how they found a business and under-report advertising. Year-on-year jumps such as BrightLocal's four-star threshold moving from 55% to 68% are large enough that some panel composition effect is plausible.

Houzz figures come from its own registered user base, which skews towards larger projects. And LIRA is a projection, not an observation: $519bn is a model output for a period that has not happened yet.

What this means going into 2027

Lead volume is no longer the metric that matters. The largest marketplace in the category gave up $270m of revenue to reduce lead duplication, which suggests the market has repriced quality over quantity.

Review recency is now an operational requirement, not a marketing task. With 74% of consumers looking for reviews from the last three months, a business that stops collecting for a quarter looks dormant, whatever its lifetime rating.

Paid acquisition costs in home improvement are unlikely to fall. At $90.92 per lead, any trade relying primarily on paid search needs either higher job values or a better close rate to stand still.

AI referral is real but early. At 8% of first searches, and with only 18% of AI users ready to contact a business afterwards, it is a channel to be present in rather than one to rebuild a budget around.

The offline market remains the prize. Both the official spend data and Angi's own disclosures point to most home services hiring still happening through recommendation. The businesses that win in 2027 will be the ones that are easy to verify after the recommendation, not the ones buying the most clicks before it. If you want help working out how findable your home services business really is in search and AI answers, you can book a call with me.