Homeowner Roof-Replacement Spending by Household Income Bracket Statistics

What the Income Gap Looks Like

Among homeowners living in homes built before 1960, the highest income quintile spent an average of $12,700 on home improvements and repairs in 2023, compared with $3,400 for the lowest income quintile, a gap of roughly 3.7 times. The figures come from 2023 American Housing Survey data, analyzed by Sophia Wedeen, a senior research analyst at Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

That gap is scoped to a specific subgroup: homeowners in homes built before 1960. It is not a whole-population income breakdown, and no roofing-only spending figure by income bracket was located for this page. Roofing is one of the major categories this improvement-and-repair spending covers, alongside windows and other replacement projects, but it is not isolated as its own line item in the published data.

Older Homes Cost More to Maintain, Regardless of Income

The same 2023 data shows a second gap, this one by home vintage rather than income. Homeowners in pre-1960 homes spent an average of $6,000 on improvements and repairs in 2023, compared with $4,500 for owners of homes built in 2010 or later. Older housing stock costs more to maintain across the board, and a roof, typically a 20 to 30 year asset, is one of the larger single-project categories that spending eventually has to cover.

What a Full Roof Replacement Costs Against That Budget

Set next to an actual replacement cost, the size of the income gap becomes more concrete. The average residential roof replacement cost $17,631 in 2025, a 33% increase over the prior four-year average, according to Verisk’s 2025 US Roof Report. That single project costs more than the entire average annual improvement-and-repair budget of a lowest-income-quintile homeowner in a pre-1960 home, and more than the $6,000 average spent by pre-1960 homeowners generally. For a lower-income homeowner, a full roof replacement is rarely a routine maintenance-budget item; it is closer to the largest single expense a home will require in a given decade, which is exactly why financing structure matters as much as price for that buyer.

The Numbers

Sources

The external data in this article draws on the sources below. Figures described in the text as estimates or industry triangulations are directional and are not attributed to a single dataset.

• The MortgagePoint, aging US housing stock driving higher repair costs
• Insurance Business Magazine, Verisk 2025 roof report

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