Homeowners Underestimate Repair Costs by $269K — Here's How Repair Pros Should Use That

Every service tech has watched a customer's face fall at the quote. Six hundred dollars for a control board, and suddenly you're the bad guy. New research says the problem isn't your price. It's the number the homeowner was secretly comparing it to, a number that's off by nearly five times. For HVAC and appliance repair pros, that gap is one of the most useful customer-education tools you're not using yet.

The finding comes from Synchrony's "Lifetime of Home Care" study. Homeowners, on average, estimate they'll spend about $70,000 maintaining and repairing a home over the years they own it. The actual figure tops $339,000. That's a gap of roughly $269,000 between what people think home care costs and what it actually costs. Most homeowners aren't budgeting a little low. They're budgeting for a different reality entirely.

And it shows up in behavior. The same research found a large share of homeowners have postponed or outright abandoned repairs for financial reasons. That tracks with what any tech sees in the field: the ignored ticking noise, the "let's wait till spring" on the failing capacitor, the fridge limping along on a dying compressor because a new one "isn't in the budget this month."

There's a backdrop to all this too. The U.S. housing stock keeps getting older. Redfin reported the median age of homes Americans are buying reached about 36 years in 2024, the oldest on record. Older houses mean older systems, and older systems mean more of exactly the repairs homeowners aren't mentally budgeting for. The gap isn't shrinking. It's widening with every year the housing stock ages.

The cost-of-waiting conversation

So how do you use it? Not by scaring people. By re-anchoring them.

When a customer flinches at a repair, they're measuring it against that fantasy $70,000-a-lifetime budget. Your job is to gently reset the frame. Something as simple as, "Most folks are surprised how much a home actually costs to keep up over the years; this is part of that, and catching it now is the cheap version," moves the conversation from sticker shock to planning. You're not defending your price. You're explaining the real economics of owning a home.

Then make the cost of waiting concrete, without inventing numbers you can't back. You don't need a fake "it compounds 7% a year" statistic. You have something better: the actual mechanics of the failure in front of you. A worn contactor that welds shut takes the compressor with it. A slow refrigerant leak ignored becomes a burned-out compressor and a scrapped system. A little corrosion on the drain becomes water damage in the ceiling below. Walk the customer through the specific, physical way small turns into big. That's a talking point rooted in craft, not a scare tactic, and it lands because it's true.

Turn the gap into financing and plans

The financing case writes itself once you accept the study's other finding: people are skipping repairs over money. If a real share of your customers are postponing work they know they need, then offering a way to pay over time isn't upselling. It's removing the exact obstacle standing between them and a booked job.

For higher-ticket repairs and replacements, a financing option converts "not right now" into "let's do it." It keeps a manageable repair from aging into a middle-of-the-night emergency where the customer has no room to negotiate and you're squeezing in an overtime call. Present it as a normal part of the quote, not a last resort: "we can do this as a one-time payment or spread it out, whichever works for your budget."

Maintenance plans are the other half. The whole reason the $269,000 gap exists is that home care is a slow, lumpy, unpredictable expense that people don't plan for. A maintenance agreement turns that lumpy surprise into a small, predictable line item, which is exactly what the research says homeowners are bad at building on their own. You're not just selling recurring revenue for your shop. You're selling the budgeting discipline the study proves your customers lack.

Two of our guides go deeper on both moves: the customer-facing case for acting sooner in the cost of delaying appliance repairs, and the shop-side mechanics of building recurring income in maintenance agreements and recurring revenue.

The $269,000 gap isn't a reason for homeowners to despair. Handled right, it's the most honest sales tool you've got: the truth that keeping a home runs far more than people think, and that the smart move is to plan for it instead of getting ambushed by it. Techs who can have that conversation calmly will book work the price-only shops keep losing at the door.

Sources

Synchrony (2024). "Lifetime of Home Care Study." Reported via PR Newswire. prnewswire.com

Redfin (2025). "The Homes Americans Are Buying Are Older Than Ever." Reported via Business Wire. businesswire.com