California homeowners are seeing sticker shock on the price of home repairs.
The cost of repairing a single-family home has jumped 40 percent since 2019, compared to a 16 percent rise in the previous five years, the Orange County Register reported, citing figures from Verisk.
The Verisk Remodel Index tracks “costs on 31 different categories of home repair, covering over 10,000 line items ranging from appliances to windows.”
The increase in prices across the Golden State mirrors the rise in home repair prices across the nation, where homeowners saw a 40 percent jump since 2019 and a 15 percent increase in the previous five years.
The increase in home repair prices, however, has slowed to a 3 percent increase in the past 12 months, as supply costs fell.
The rise in prices, in part, can be blamed on higher construction wages, now 62 percent of all California repair costs, according to Verisk. Over the past year, construction labor expenses rose 4 percent.
The average weekly wage of a California construction worker is up 21 percent in the five years ended in June, according to the Register, versus a 17 percent hike in the previous five years.
Rising prices can also be attributed to the rising cost of materials, pushed up by pandemic supply shortages and a building boom, from remodels to new homes.
One federal index of wholesale prices for all construction supplies soared 38 percent in the five years ended in September, according to the Register, versus 9 percent gains in the previous five years.
At the same time, inflation surged 23 percent over the last five years, compared to 8 percent between 2014 and 2019.
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— Dana Bartholomew