Home Improvement Cost Projections By State

Wide varying costs

The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) projected home improvement cost for this 2014, and the numbers are surprising to some. With a lot of remodeling, landscaping, and new roofs to be expected this year.  An average of more than $5 million will be spent on home improvement in 2014.

Costs vary by Zip Code

The top five zip codes in spending are all in Maryland, Texas, or Illinois.  You might believe homeowners in placed like Connecticut, New York, and California would be spending more on remodeling and restoring.

Each of the top five zip codes slated for the most overall home improvement contain no less than 15,000 homes occupied by the homeowners themselves. These homeowners have an average income of just under $150,000 and more than half of them have a bachelor’s degree or higher. With all of this said, there is stereotype-breaking data that tells us why the top five zip codes are what they are: because the spending is measured by the NAHB in total, not per household for these specific statistics. So when we begin to discuss individual spending on a household-by-household basis, results fall a little more in line with expectations, with Washington D.C., Connecticut, and Massachusetts all occupying the top five list of “per home spending” on home improvement and remodeling.

Aside from the 20854 zip code in Maryland, which is at the very top of the total spending list, most zip codes across the US do not have an unusually large share of homes that are out-of-date. In the world of remodeling, homes that were built from the early 1960s to just before 1980 are considered the most viable group for serious modifications. As such, homeowners with these types of houses on their hands may find themselves in a situation that is more urgent than those who own homes built more recently.

The “magic zip code” of 20854 is the only location on the list of the entire country with estimated cost of improvement for this year to be more than $60 million, and more than half of the owner-occupied homes within this zip code were constructed during and just after the midcentury modern era, making them attractive to many tastes, but definitely in need of repair, restoration, weatherization, and upgrades to make them greener houses.

Source Material:Time.com