HVAC repairs have grown to represent 88% of jobs and 31.3% of revenue on the Housecall Pro platform in the first quarter of 2026, up from 21.6% of revenue in Q4 2021, according to the company's State of Home Service Spending 2026 report, which surveyed more than 1,100 U.S. households to document how financial pressure and an aging housing stock are reshaping HVAC contractor revenue mix.
The report identifies a market that is not shrinking but is shifting — with homeowners deferring equipment replacement in favor of repair, extending system life cycles under financial stress, and increasingly relying on HVAC contractors for diagnostic and component-level service rather than full system changeouts. For contractors whose business models were built around the replacement cycle that drove strong volumes in 2022 through 2024, the shift is a significant demand-side change that requires adjustment to service line strategy, technician skill emphasis, and membership and maintenance program structure.
The Aging Housing Stock Driver
The report's most structurally significant finding is that 72% of homeowners surveyed are not planning to move in the near term, and 69% of those homeowners live in houses that are more than 20 years old. A home built in the mid-2000s or earlier is approaching or past the typical end-of-life for original HVAC equipment — a market configuration that fills the pipeline with systems that are due for replacement or at least extensive maintenance. However, the combination of elevated interest rates, reduced housing market activity, and economic uncertainty has pushed homeowners toward deferral and repair rather than the proactive replacement decisions that drove installer demand in prior years.
Ian Ligtenberg, CEO of Housecall Pro, said that people do not realize how built-in demand is in this market — the question is whether that demand expresses itself as repair or replacement, and right now it is expressing as repair. Ligtenberg specifically noted that HVAC contractors who have positioned themselves purely as install-and-replacement shops are underserving the current market by not capturing repair revenue that their customer bases are actively seeking. Ligtenberg said repair is currently the bread and butter, and that contractors who have not built out their diagnostic capability and repair offerings are leaving recurring revenue on the table.
What Homeowners Say They Plan to Spend
When it comes to home systems, 20% of homeowners surveyed said they plan to repair or replace HVAC in 2026 — a share that places HVAC behind plumbing, appliances, and exterior work in terms of planned spending categories, but ahead of electrical and roofing. The positioning of HVAC in the middle of the spending priority list reflects the non-discretionary nature of cooling and heating systems relative to more optional improvements, but also the deferral dynamic in which replacement is being pushed back while repair absorbs a growing share of the HVAC budget.
The report also found that 41% of homeowners who delayed a repair reported that the deferral ultimately cost them more than addressing the issue promptly would have. For HVAC contractors communicating with customers about system condition, that finding provides a specific data point to anchor the argument for timely repair over deferral: almost half of homeowners who waited too long on a repair ended up paying more in aggregate than they would have spent on the original fix.
Estimates, Financing, and Membership Plans
Three operational takeaways from the Housecall Pro report are directly actionable for HVAC contractors. First, single-line estimates that quote one price invite comparison shopping; detailed estimates with multiple solution tiers shift the customer conversation from whether to hire toward which solution makes the most sense — a framing change that typically improves conversion rates and average ticket value simultaneously. Second, financing availability significantly increases close rates: the report cites an average close rate of 38% when contractors do not offer financing versus 49% when they do, a 29% improvement in close rate that is material to revenue on any job where the customer's primary objection is budget. Third, the 69% of homeowners in aging homes who are not planning to move represent exactly the customer profile for annual maintenance agreements — consistent preventive service customers with equipment approaching end-of-life who benefit from the contractor relationship as systems begin requiring more frequent attention.
