Turning the Repair Backlog into Opportunity: Insights From the Fall 2025 Benchmark Report

In the next episode of the Mastering ServiceTitan podcast, we highlight key takeaways from the Fall 2025 Benchmark Report, with a particular focus on the $300 billion-plus backlog of deferred repairs caused by consumers who chose to delay large maintenance and replacement jobs.

To help home services contractors understand what this means for 2026, ServiceTitan’s Chris Hunter, Principal Industry Advisor, and Deanna Kawasaki, Senior Director of Titan Intelligence, break it all down in a recent webinar. 

The top takeaway? This repair backlog is setting the stage for a “huge burst” of high-ticket, high-urgency work, and now’s the time to prepare for that coming bull run.

“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.”

First, Kawasaki explains the market bifurcation, how the wealthy are spending more on luxury services while others focus on low-cost repairs. 

Then, Hunter provides actionable advice on using Marketing Pro to target both segments and highlights must-have tools like AI voice agents, the Field Mobile app, and Integrated Financing to ensure your business is prepared to capture every opportunity.

The deferred maintenance economy and the consumer bifurcation model

In 2025, 71% of homeowners postponed renovations or repairs and 62% deferred critical maintenance, Kawasaki says.

“What we're seeing is deferred maintenance, and that is not necessarily repair versus replace. Folks are even deferring the repairs, depending on the size of the repairs,” 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.”

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

In the coming year, however, that bubble of deferred maintenance will 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,” Kawasaki says.

Homeowners are also doing less big remodeling, and more do-it-yourself (DIY) projects to save money. But many will fail and ultimately hire a local contractor to come in and fix their projects.

The current consumer trends also tell a tale of two types of customers:

1. Consumers with record credit card debt for over a year now and they can’t afford to pay for maintenance and repairs. 

2. Consumers with higher incomes who 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. 

This creates a divided consumer market, or what Kawasaki describes as a market bifurcation.

“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.

Hunter says the top side of the barbell represents those high-dollar installations, which helps to boost the average ticket for contractors doing those types of jobs. The handle of the barbell represents average-dollar replacements ($8,000 to $10,000), which significantly decreased over the past year. The bottom of the barbell represents all of 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,” Hunter says.

How contractors can act upon insights from TitanAdvisor’s benchmarks

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. 

With 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)

For example, you can 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 should highlight time savings as an added value. For consumers who need repairs or replacements as part of that backlog, you can offer Integrated Financing as an affordable option.

Also to handle the influx on the horizon, review your job booking rates and explore strategies to improve them. By implementing ServiceTitan’s automation features, you can better prepare for those urgency spikes and make significant improvements to your average booking rates.

AI voice agents, online bookings, and training techs with the Field Mobile App

Here are some must-have ServiceTitan 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 use cases (after-hours, overflow, holidays, weekends) to be answered by virtual voice agents.

Online Bookings

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. 

Training Techs with the 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’s 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.

The new Field Mobile App also includes Atlas, ServiceTitan’s new AI sidekick, which provides instant answers in the field. 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.

Why integrated financing is essential for contractors to stay competitive

Your field technicians should also offer 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.

“This is a huge differentiator between you and your competitors,” he adds. “It's amazing how many [service businesses] don't even have a financing option, nevertheless a second, third, or fourth look, or a no-credit option. We're very lucky that ServiceTitan makes this available and makes it very easy.”

You can find this interview and many more by subscribing to Mastering ServiceTitan on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or here. 

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