For much of 2025, homeowners across the U.S. delayed essential maintenance, creating a $300 billion-plus backlog of deferred repairs that’s set to define the trades landscape in 2026.
This “repair backlog economy”—with more than 70 percent of households postponing projects due to rising costs, high interest rates, and record credit-card debt—creates immediate challenges, but also future opportunities, for contractors providing home services.
In a recent webinar, Deanna Kawasaki, Senior Director of Product, Titan Intelligence, and Chris Hunter, Principal Industry Advisor, unpack what these shifts mean for residential service businesses. They show you how to use your Fall 2025 Benchmark Report to prepare for an eventual surge in high-margin replacement jobs, capture work from both cautious and affluent homeowners, and leverage financing and AI to stay resilient in an uneven economy.
Use our data-driven insights and actionable strategies to finish 2025 strong and position your business for growth in 2026.
>>Ready to learn how to read and take action with your Fall 2025 Benchmark Report? Watch the full webinar on demand.
Deciphering Consumer Trends in a Repair Backlog Economy
The numbers certainly paint a bleak picture when looking at how we’ve gone from a repair-over-replace mentality in the past couple of years to now deferring maintenance altogether:
71% of homeowners postponed renovations or repairs in 2025
62% deferred critical maintenance
14% delayed HVAC replacement despite heatwaves
$317 billion in potential exposure from deferred repairs
“Now, that may sound bad, but it actually isn't. There's a silver lining here,” Kawasaki says.
“It's a different ballgame out there,” Hunter agrees. “A lot of consumers, they're just putting off things they don't have to absolutely spend money on. But don't get bummed out. This is a ‘you better get excited’ type of thing because some really cool things are about to unleash.”
All of that deferred maintenance is creating a bubble that’s about to pop, Kawasaki explains. Customers’ unmaintained mechanical systems will break down, creating an emergency or urgency to repair or replace that system.
“It’s going to be a big-ticket, high-urgency [job] and there’s going to be a bunch of them when they hit, because it is going to happen,” Kawasaki says.
Homeowners are also doing less big remodeling and more do-it-yourself (DIY) projects to save money.
And while homeowners may attempt more DIY projects, many will fail and ultimately hire a local contractor to come in and fix it.
“They can only do what a homeowner can do. They're not licensed contractors,” Kawasaki says. “Some will succeed, others will fail, and there will be an emergency and they will call you.”
Fewer people moving and buying new homes is another factor to consider, Hunter says.
“With people not moving as much, they're not doing these big elaborate projects and getting their new homes fixed up, but they are doing these minor things,” he says.
The current consumer trends also tell a tale of two types of customers. We have consumers with record credit card debt for over a year now, and they can’t afford to pay for maintenance and repairs. On the other hand, we have higher-income households that continue to drive new installations and big-ticket spending.
“Consumers and homeowners who can afford are still affording, and they're still increasing year over year in these $12K, $13K, $14K and above installations,” Kawasaki says.
But to help you understand why the majority of consumers are choosing to defer maintenance and repairs and which projects they’re delaying, we offer some insightful statistics in your Fall 2025 Benchmark Report. Here’s a quick snapshot.
Delayed home projects include:
48% painting, flooring, or other aesthetic work
33% bathroom remodel
26% kitchen remodel
22% window upgrades
21% electrical or plumbing repair
20% roof replacement
14% HVAC replacement
And consumers say the top two factors that need to improve before they resume spending money on home upgrades are: lower inflation and lower costs for building materials.
Consumers’ perception of inflation plays a big role in how they choose to spend, Kawasaki says.
“Sometimes it’s a little bit about reality, about how much money they have, but some of it’s about being conservative and spending,” she explains.
Hunter believes lower mortgage rates will have a major impact for the trades, as people sell their existing homes and move into new ones.
“They're hanging onto that 3.5% interest rate they got back right before COVID hit, and they're not wanting to give that up,” he says. “But if it'll drop just a little bit, I think it'll really unleash a windfall of opportunity with these new movers again.”
Another good gauge for tracking the economy as it relates to the trades is the Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute (AHRI) monthly shipment data from manufacturers.
Hunter says you can sign up for a monthly email from AHRI to see manufacturers’ shipment data on central air conditioners and air-source heat pumps year over year. With all of these numbers going down in 2025, this report may seem like a lot of bad news. But you just have to dig a little deeper to find the silver lining.
In this case, just look for the equipment shipment cliff.
“Every 10 to 15 years, certain units have to be replaced. So, it's just math. If you look back at what happened 10 to 15 years ago, we're fixing to be coming up on a windfall,” Hunter says. “It's really setting up for what can be a 10-year bull run of air conditioning replacements.”
Opportunities will present themselves, Kawasaki says, as we prepare for a bifurcation market, defined as one that’s divided into two distinct segments, where different parts of the market behave in opposite ways. She describes it as two humps on either end.
“Think of it like a barbell,” she says, with more small jobs getting booked on the low end and more large jobs getting booked on the high end, but with fewer jobs getting booked in the middle.
“The top side of the barbell, where the customers still have money, they're spending it, they're doing the high-dollar replacements. Those contractors are just absolutely crushing it. They're the ones that I look at their average ticket and they're $20,000-plus, and there's no slowing them down,” Hunter explains.
“Now, the middle where those average units were replaced, they were the $8,000, the $9,000, the $10,000 tickets, they’re getting squeezed down. That's the handle of that barbell,” he adds. “And then you got the bottom. This is all that repair backlog.
“And the people that I talk to, who say they're not growing a ton on the top line, but they're more profitable and they're doing really well, guess what? They learned how to make money just doing service,” he adds.
Market bifurcation also affects early AI adopters when it comes to using marketing efficiently and booking jobs efficiently.
“We're seeing this change in different metrics right now starting to happen. And particularly with those who do use it versus those who don't use it,” Kawasaki says.
Download Your Fall 2025 Benchmark Report
Click on the rocket ship icon in the upper right-hand corner of your ServiceTitan dashboard to download your customized Fall 2025 Benchmark Report.
On the first page of the report, you’ll find articles about current market trends. On the second page, you can see how your business compares to others of a similar size, primary trade, residential/commercial mix, and regional location. The report shows how you compare with call booking rates, completed revenue, average ticket, and more.
Kawasaki offers some additional help to read and understand your report.
“If you're in the 50th percentile, that means that you're better than 50% of the businesses that are like you, and you still have 50% of businesses that are like you that are ahead of you,” she says.
Once you’ve downloaded and reviewed your Fall 2025 Benchmark Report, it’s time to take action to prepare for that anticipated 2026 buying surge by consumers.
“If you're not taking any action, you're going to find yourself left behind pretty quickly in this day and age,” Hunter says.
Crush It in 2026 with ServiceTitan Tools and Resources
In light of the market bifurcation and the need to cater to two types of consumers in 2026, now may be the time to shake up your marketing messaging.
“Today, you can be smart with this,” Hunter says. “You can segment your marketing efforts and really target those people who are looking for that luxury, on-time fast response, ‘I still got the money. I'm willing to spend it, but I want the best of the best.’
“Or you can actually target that, ‘Hey, I'm looking for a discount. Money's tough. What's your financing offer?’ You can speak that language now, based on your different marketing efforts,” he adds.
To crush it in 2026 in terms of automation, revenue, and growth, you can level up with ServiceTitan’s core and Pro products, including:
Marketing Pro (add-on)
AI Voice Agents (add-on)
Scheduling Pro (add-on)
Dispatch Board (core)
Field Mobile App (core)
Atlas in Mobile (new Field Mobile App)
Conduit (add-on)
Integrated Financing (core)
Here’s a quick snapshot of what each offers:
Marketing Pro
Target customers with different messaging based on their prime buying needs with Marketing Pro. For those with higher incomes who are still willing to pay for repair, replace, and install services, messaging must highlight time savings as an added value.
“The things that appeal to them are the things that have to do with time, right? Time is something that they can't buy more of,” Kawasaki says. “It's that extra thing that values their time more, and they're willing to pay for it.”
Next, look at your Benchmark Report to see whether there’s room for improvement on your job booking rates. By implementing ServiceTitan’s automation features, you can better prepare for those urgency spikes and make significant improvements to your average booking rates.
Here are some must-have automation features to help you with high demand.
AI Voice Agents
AI Voice Agents are automated virtual agents designed specifically for the trades to handle incoming calls at all hours, book jobs, reschedule jobs, or manage customer requests.
This feature, available through Contact Center Pro or as a standalone product, allows you to assign certain cases (after-hours, overflow, holidays, weekends) to be answered by virtual voice agents.
Scheduling Pro
Scheduling Pro allows your customers to book jobs online 24/7. Booked jobs automatically appear in the ServiceTitan dashboard, streamlining the booking process.
This Pro product now offers an SMS Booking Agent to help you book jobs with customers via text, as well as an automated SMS follow-up feature to capture abandoned bookings in Scheduling Pro.
“Now with this new tool, it will be able to immediately start engaging with them via text message. And the data is really, really good on what happens with that. We're seeing a 7% recovery rate on the abandoned bookings,” Hunter says.
Dispatch Board Enhancements
Per ServiceTitan release notes, enhancements made to the core dispatching software include:
Dispatching Auto-Adjust Job Duration: allows you to automatically adjust job durations if techs complete a job early or take longer than anticipated.
Dispatching Non-Job Events Quick Add: helps you manage and add non-job events (meetings, etc.) to technicians’ schedules quickly and easily.
Field Mobile App
Download the new Field Mobile App to start training and scaling your technicians to prepare for 2026.
“When things cranked down a little bit, people weren't hiring as many technicians and they stopped training as much,” Hunter says. “Now is the time to think about this. We've got tools available that can help you train your technicians better, faster, and get ready for this burst, this bull run, for all this work that's coming.”
ServiceTitan users can download the new Field Mobile App now and start training techs right away. The new app replaces the old mobile app, which will be sunsetted sometime next year.
“It’s faster, it’s more reliable, ” Hunter says. “All the things that we heard complaints about on the old app, they've addressed with the Field Mobile App. Eventually, it’s going to be the only Field Mobile App that we have.”
Atlas in Mobile
Atlas, ServiceTitan’s new AI sidekick, provides instant answers in the field on the new Field Mobile App. Rather than wasting time calling dispatchers and CSRs, techs can ask Atlas questions about a specific job and Atlas immediately scours your ServiceTitan customer data to deliver instant answers.
“This is going to save so much time for your technician in the field and all those people in the office who are having to communicate with the technician,” Hunter says.
Conduit Tech
ServiceTitan announced its acquisition of Conduit Tech, the LiDAR-powered design and sales platform for HVAC professionals, in September. Conduit allows you to build permit-ready load calculations and drive customer engagement more efficiently.
With Conduit, HVAC field reps can:
Collect photos, notes, and homeowner concerns in-app
Run instant LiDAR load calculations with room-by-room sizing and recommendations
Use 3D visuals to highlight problem zones and airflow imbalances
Document sensitivities (like allergies) and link them to design choices
“It's kind of a game-changer in sales and also a time-saver and money-saver,” Hunter says.
The #1 newsletter for the trades.
Integrated Financing
And last, but not least, your field technicians should be offering customer financing on every job. Integrated Financing, available on the Field Mobile App, allows techs to automatically seek a second look on financing when the primary provider rejects a customer’s application.
Recent enhancements now include a single application waterfall process.
“It’s a time-saver, and it’ll automatically do all the waterfall-look for your technicians or your salespeople out in the field,” Hunter says. “It’ll automatically start trying to find the next best option for them.”
