NEW YORK, NY — Mortgage rates that remain painfully high are doing more than freezing the for-sale market. They are also changing how homeowners think about upgrades, repairs and even the idea of moving at all.
Many households are choosing to stay put and make their current homes work a little longer. That shift is squeezing renovation plans, especially when borrowing against home equity now costs much more than it did when rates were lower. Instead of financing big projects, many owners are trimming back plans, delaying cosmetic work and focusing on upkeep they cannot safely ignore.
Industry watchers say the result is a slower pace for large renovations and a growing preference for maintenance over major remodels.
Home equity is available, but borrowing against it has become expensive
Traditionally, homeowners who needed money for a remodel would turn first to a home equity loan or a home equity line of credit. Those options are still available, but they are much less attractive when borrowing costs are elevated.
Tom Graff, chief investment officer at Facet, said rising rates make home equity more expensive to tap and tend to hold back consumer spending, especially on big-ticket purchases such as renovations. He also said the Federal Reserve has been raising rates in part to slow demand, which means tighter household budgets are an intended part of the policy effect.
Graff said consumer spending is already a weak driver of growth, leaving the economy with little cushion if conditions worsen. He pointed to slower wage growth, a soft labor market and elevated fuel prices as additional pressure points.
Homeowners are stretching timelines and calling ordinary houses forever homes
Angie Hicks, co-founder and chief customer officer of Angi, said homeowners are increasingly reluctant to give up low mortgage rates from years past. Many are trying to hold on to loans in the 2% to 3% range for as long as possible.
Hicks said that has changed the way people think about their current homes. Instead of treating a house as a short-term stop before a move, more owners are treating it as a place they may live in far longer than planned. Angi is seeing people stay in their homes about five years longer than they expected.
That shift means some projects are being scaled back or postponed entirely. A furnace tune-up, for example, is taking priority over a kitchen overhaul.
Angi data shows households are choosing maintenance over larger projects
Hicks said the consumer pattern looks familiar during periods of financial strain. When inflation rises or the economy feels shaky, people usually do not stop spending on homes altogether. Instead, they redirect money toward needs that keep the house functioning.
That can mean paying for a water heater instead of building a new deck, or breaking larger projects into smaller phases. It can also mean reaching into savings rather than borrowing, if a job absolutely has to get done. According to Angi data, 60% of consumers are now putting off projects and shifting toward maintenance.
Kitchens and bathrooms remain popular targets for improvement, but homeowners are looking for cheaper ways to refresh them. Hicks said some are replacing hardware or repainting cabinets instead of paying for a full remodel, since cabinetry is often the biggest expense in a kitchen upgrade.
Retail data points to a broad slowdown in big-ticket renovation purchases
Philip Odelfelt, chief executive of Datavations, said point-of-sale data from major home-improvement retailers shows consumers are staying in their homes but deferring major renovation work. He said big-ticket renovation categories fell between 10% and 28% from September 2025 through August 2026 at Home Depot and Lowe’s compared with the same period a year earlier.
Some of the steepest declines showed up in shower-related products. Datavations said sales of shower stalls, kits and enclosures fell 21%, while unit sales dropped 28%. Bathtubs were down 10% in sales and 12% in units. Because the pattern appears at both retailers, Odelfelt said it points to a broader consumer shift rather than a problem at one chain.
Lower-cost items have held up better, and that difference matters. Pull-down kitchen faucets, which average about $147, fell only about 3%.
Contractors and analysts see fewer fixer-uppers and more delayed work
Business school professor Mark Ratchford of Tulane University said many consumers are simply doing the math and deciding that borrowing is too expensive. He said that includes him, noting that he needs to remodel his kitchen but cannot justify the price and interest charges right now.
Ratchford said people are skipping cosmetic improvements and only taking on work they have to do. He also said the high cost of borrowing has hurt the fixer-upper market, where buyers once counted on financing repairs and reselling at a profit.
Andre Kazimierski, co-owner and president of HomeHero Roofing, said it has historically been common for homeowners to use equity loans or HELOCs for roof replacements and other major jobs. He warned that if people cannot access that money now, major renovations may keep slowing.
Locked-up equity could ripple through housing, retailers and weather-related repairs
Kazimierski said deferred projects can create longer-term risks for homes, especially as severe weather becomes more common. He pointed to high winds, heavy rain and extreme temperatures as reasons needed repairs should not be postponed too long.
When roofs, windows or HVAC systems reach the end of their useful lives, households often have little choice but to spend. If they cannot finance those jobs, homes may become more exposed to damage that could have been avoided.
Genine Fallon of Praxis Rock Advisors said the broader housing economy also feels the drag when equity stays locked up. She said households and property owners alike tend to defer discretionary capital projects first, leading to less turnover, less renovation spending and a market where owners hold onto properties rather than improving or selling them.
Bigger economic forces are also weighing on household spending
Graff said the housing slowdown fits into a wider economic picture in which consumer spending is already lagging. He added that the economy has a limited buffer because wage growth is slowing and fuel costs remain high.
He said data center construction is now doing a large share of the work in supporting GDP growth. If that spending slows even modestly, he said the economy could slip toward recession.
For homeowners, that leaves a familiar but difficult tradeoff. Keep the house running, postpone the overhaul and wait for borrowing costs to improve. For many families, that means the deck, kitchen, bathroom or other upgrade stays on the wish list while repairs and maintenance take priority.
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