Household Upkeep Costs Hit a Fresh Record

If your R&M reserve looks about right, it's probably because you set it last year. Maintenance costs just moved under you — and the reserve that felt comfortable in January is already short.

The number

Angi's State of Home Spending pegs average U.S. household home-maintenance spend at $2,041 in 2025, up 16.6% from $1,750 in 2024, with total home-improvement spending projected to reach a record ~$526B by Q1 2026.

That consumer figure is an upstream read on the same labor-and-materials inflation squeezing operator budgets. It sits directly above our $1,740/unit/yr R&M benchmark and the $1,143 average emergency-repair cost in the database.

The problem this exposes

When single-home upkeep climbs double digits, per-unit R&M reserves set on last year's assumptions are already behind — and the drift is invisible until it shows up as a blown budget at year-end. Worse, the more of that spend goes to emergency repairs (at $1,143 a pop) instead of planned ones, the faster the reserve burns, because reactive work is always the priciest way to fix anything.

The fix, by name

Two things blunt the squeeze, and both are execution. FYN's Portfolio view keeps per-unit R&M spend visible across every property so the drift surfaces in-year, not at close — and Crew + vendor dispatch shifts work from expensive emergency calls toward planned, crew-first repairs, which is where the reserve is won or lost. You can't stop input inflation, but you can stop paying the reactive premium on top of it.

What it looks like in practice

Get ahead of the drift

A 16.6% jump in upkeep costs won't wait for your next budget cycle. FYN makes the drift visible in-year and shifts spend from reactive to planned — the two moves that keep rising maintenance costs from quietly eating NOI.