The DIY Retreat: Professional Contractors Are Taking a Bigger Share of Home-Improvement Spending

The home-improvement opportunity is not only about how much homeowners spend. It is also about who gets paid to do the work.

Harvard JCHS researcher Luna Xu's September 21 analysis finds professionally installed improvements reached $340.5 billion in 2023. From 2021 to 2023, real professional spending rose 14% while DIY spending fell 13%. The evidence points to a larger role for contractors, not the disappearance of DIY.

New analysis, historical data

Professional installation's share of improvement spending

A bigger professional share can coexist with a slower market

The distinction between market share and market growth matters immediately. In its July 23, 2026 forecast, Harvard JCHS projected annual owner-occupied improvement and repair spending growth slowing to 0.5% by the second quarter of 2027, with spending around $519 billion. That is a forecast, not a realized result.

The forecast also measures a different scope: improvements plus maintenance and repairs. It should not be multiplied by the historical professional share to manufacture a current contractor-market estimate. The DIY study focuses on improvements.

For an owner planning a hiring budget, the practical lesson is to separate a structural opportunity from a quarterly sales assumption. A market can gradually favor professional installation while individual shops still face a thinner estimate pipeline, longer decision cycles or a local slowdown. The national numbers do not establish which of those conditions exists in your service area.

Sell the completed outcome, not a marked-up shopping list

A homeowner comparing a contractor's estimate with the retail price of equipment is comparing different purchases. An installed job also requires diagnosis, preparation, labor, coordination and responsibility for the result. That difference should be explained before a price objection becomes the entire conversation.

For an electrical estimate, show the scope, access assumptions, testing and permit responsibilities that actually apply. For a plumbing project, distinguish an equipment swap from associated piping or drainage work. For HVAC, spell out what is included in installation, commissioning and cleanup. Do not imply that every job needs the same upgrades or promise benefits that the quoted work cannot deliver.

The sales opportunity is not to belittle customers who do their own work. It is to make the professional portion understandable: what the company will complete, who will be accountable, what the customer must supply, and what remains excluded. Trust becomes easier to earn when the buyer can see the boundary between a product and an installed solution.

Professional demand is not the same as unlimited purchasing power

A separate JCHS analysis published April 10, 2025 illustrates the affordability gap. In 2023, homeowners in the lowest income fifth spent an average of $2,300 on improvements, versus $9,100 for the highest income fifth. Those are historical household averages, not suggested job prices or evidence about any particular customer's budget.

A better proposal process lets the homeowner distinguish necessary work from optional scope. Give a repair option when technically appropriate. Explain a replacement option when it is justified. Where financing is offered, present the actual terms and total cost rather than treating a monthly payment as a substitute for price transparency.

The household that decides to hire a professional may still postpone the project, choose a smaller scope or compare several estimates. None of those outcomes means the lead was worthless. Track the stated reason rather than labeling every unsold estimate a bad lead.

Your share is won after the inquiry

A structural shift does not allocate a single job to a particular business. Your company still has to respond, qualify the work, build a clear estimate and deliver on the schedule it promises.

Before increasing advertising spend, inspect one recent cohort of inquiries by service line. How many became conversations? How many received estimates? How many stalled because the scope was confusing, a callback was missed or a promised appointment was unavailable? Compare sold jobs with completed jobs and actual gross profit, not just a larger quoted pipeline.

That exercise can support a more defensible staffing decision than a national headline. Additional demand is useful only when the business has the skills, coordination and working capital to fulfill it without creating a larger callback problem.

Put the finding to work this week

• Review your five most common estimates for clear inclusions, exclusions and installation responsibilities.
• Separate necessary repair, justified replacement and optional upgrades instead of bundling every job into one large number.
• Measure inquiry-to-estimate, estimate-to-sale and completed-job margin by service type; do not use national spending share as a local forecast.
• Audit response and follow-up capacity before raising the advertising budget or promising faster installation.

The opportunity is professional value, not a guaranteed boom

Methodology

Dispatch checked the original September 21 JCHS analysis, the July 2026 LIRA release and methodology, and the separate April 2025 affordability analysis. Historical observations and forecasts are distinguished throughout. The original chart calculates professional share as 100 minus published DIY share; it does not reproduce Harvard's chart artwork or interactive. The findings do not identify causal effects, current project volumes or any individual contractor's growth rate. Sources and photo permissions checked September 26, 2026.