Statistics
Home services marketing statistics, traced to source
How homeowners actually find contractors — real industry data showing relationship still dominates, a full provider-side channel breakdown, what's known (and honestly not known) about licensing and seasonal demand.
Home services is a vertical where two organisations run genuine, recurring, sampled research: the Home Improvement Research Institute on the homeowner side, and Jobber on the provider side. Between the two, this page can compare how homeowners say they found their contractor against how providers say their leads actually arrive — two different populations, asked two different questions, largely agreeing with each other.
The clearest finding echoes what shows up in real estate: a majority of actual hires still happen through relationship — prior experience or referral — rather than through active, paid lead generation, even as that paid lead generation carries a real and comparatively high cost. In the FOUND, TRUSTED, CHOSEN framework this site works to, that puts most of the decisive weight on the second and third stages rather than the first.
Underneath that headline sits a fuller picture: a full channel breakdown from 1,050 surveyed providers, what those providers report customers weighing (including licensing, addressed with its scope caveats attached), current demand and capacity, and an honest account of the seasonal and emergency-demand data this review could not find, despite a real search for it.
How the grading works
The grading is deliberately unforgiving. A statistic from a good organisation still earns a C if the sample size is not published beside the number, because a reader cannot check what they cannot see.
Cite freely
Primary source, dated, with sample and method published. Quote it, with its scope attached.
Cite with scope
Real research with a published sample, but narrower than the way it is usually quoted — self-reported, or one country, or one kind of business.
Cite with caution
Named source and plausible method, but the sample size or methodology is not published where the number is. Attribute it, do not lean on it.
Do not cite
Untraceable, undated, or superseded by later changes to the thing it measured. These are the numbers keeping the roundups alive.
Prior experience and referral still account for six in ten hires
The same relationship-driven pattern found in real estate agent selection shows up again here, from a different, credible industry source.
31% / 31%
Grade Bof homeowners found their hired contractor through prior experience with that pro or a referral from friends and family, respectively — roughly 62% combined.
What it does not say HIRI is a genuine, dedicated home-improvement industry research organisation with a recurring quarterly tracker — a real, if less widely known, primary source. The 62% combined relationship-driven figure closely parallels what NAR's data shows for real estate agent selection, suggesting this pattern may be common across local trust-dependent services generally, though that's an observation worth testing rather than an established finding on its own.
What this means for where to put the next hour of marketing effort
Two in three hires start from a relationship rather than a search, which is a genuinely awkward fact for a marketing page to lead with, and worth sitting with rather than explaining away. It doesn't mean paid and organic search don't matter — a new customer with no prior experience of any local pro still has to find one somehow, and that's exactly where the channel-level data further down this page becomes useful.
What it does mean is that a referral programme and a deliberate review-generation habit are not "nice to have" add-ons sitting outside the real marketing plan. For a vertical where relationship already produces most of the hires, they are close to the highest-leverage lever available, and one most home-service businesses run informally at best.
Search advertising's real cost per lead for this vertical, covered later on this page, is worth reading with that context attached: it's expensive, in a category where the majority of actual hires don't come through it at all.
Home services carry the third-highest cost per lead of the local verticals measured
Real search advertising data, consistent with the broader industry CPL table on this site.
$90.92
Grade Baverage cost per lead for home and home-improvement services in search advertising, against a $66.69 all-industry average.
What it does not say Higher than the all-industry average, and worth reading alongside the referral finding above — a vertical where paid lead generation is comparatively expensive, and where a meaningful majority of actual hires still come through relationship rather than a paid channel at all.
What this means for budgeting a paid channel here specifically
A $90.92 average cost per lead is not, on its own, evidence that search advertising is a bad channel for a home-service business — it's evidence that the click is expensive, which is a different statement. Whether it's worth paying depends on close rate and job value, the same calculation this site's local lead generation statistics page works through in full with a worked example, and the one our cost per lead calculator runs on your own figures.
What this page adds is the context that specific example doesn't carry on its own: in home services, a business weighing whether to fund a paid channel is doing so in a category where referral and repeat business, not paid search, already produce most of the hires.
So the honest question here is rarely "paid or organic". It is whether paid spend is buying genuinely new customers, or just competing for ones who were likely to call anyway.
Providers report a wide channel spread — and the businesses doing best use several at once
This is a different survey question from the homeowner-side referral finding above: Jobber asked home service business owners directly which channels actually produce their leads, rather than asking homeowners how they found their contractor. The two surveys measure the same market from opposite sides and land on the same conclusion from different data — the pattern that shapes how we approach marketing for home service businesses.
59% / 59%
Grade Bof home service business owners named referrals, and repeat customers, respectively, as one of their top sources of new leads — the two highest-scoring channels in a multi-select ranking of eleven channels.
What it does not say This is providers reporting which channels they believe produce leads, not a tracked attribution measurement — the same limitation as most marketing-channel self-report data. It corroborates the homeowner-side HIRI finding above from the opposite direction, which is more useful than either figure alone: two different survey populations, asked two different questions, arrived at the same conclusion.
3 to 5
Grade Clead sources used consistently by Jobber's own top-performing customers, by the company's internal platform data — implying a single-channel strategy is uncommon among the businesses doing best.
What it does not say Jobber is the party selling the software this finding indirectly favours, and "top-performing" is not formally defined beyond context clues in the same report (strong revenue, established operations, a 70%+ quote close rate). Directionally plausible — diversifying channels is standard marketing advice for good reason — but not independently verifiable from what's published.
Where home service businesses say their leads actually come from
Referrals and repeat customers each outscore every paid or social channel — Facebook is the strongest single paid/organic channel measured, at roughly half the score of relationship-driven leads.
Scale 0–65%. n=1,050 US/Canada home service business owners, surveyed December 2025; multi-select, so values don't sum to 100%. Five further channels — door-to-door sales, postcards/flyers, Instagram, YouTube, and yard signs/vehicle wraps — tied at 8% each and are omitted from this chart for space.. Source: Jobber, Blue Collar Strong: The 2026 Home Service Trends Report, 2026
What this means for a channel plan
The channel list itself is less useful than the shape of it: relationship-driven leads dominate, one paid social platform (Facebook) outperforms every other paid or organic digital channel measured, and Google Search and Local Services Ads — the two channels most home-service marketing spend is built around — sit fourth and fifth, each named by roughly a fifth of owners.
That doesn't make search advertising a bad channel; it makes it one channel among several a well-run business is drawing leads from at once, which is consistent with the "top performers use 3-5 lead sources" finding above, and with the multi-channel approach set out in our local lead generation guide.
The practical read is that a business relying on a single paid channel is running a narrower operation than the businesses this survey describes as doing best — this is a recommendation drawn from the pattern in the data, not a separate measurement of causation between channel count and performance.
Price and reviews dominate; licensing is a real factor but a smaller one than the marketing usually assumes
This is worth reading carefully on scope: the figures below are business owners reporting what they believe customers weigh when choosing a provider, not a survey of homeowners themselves. Treat it as informed operator perception, the same caveat this site applies to the equivalent finding on the lead response time statistics page.
| Factor | Share of owners citing it |
|---|---|
| Competitive pricing | 62% |
| Positive reviews or ratings | 51% |
| Speed of initial response | 25% |
| Safety, background checks, or licensing | 22% |
| An easy booking process | 14% |
| A strong online presence | 8% |
Owner-reported perception of customer priorities, not a direct customer-side survey — the report does not include a matched homeowner sample asking the same question. Multi-select, so the column does not sum to 100%. Source: Jobber, Blue Collar Strong: The 2026 Home Service Trends Report
What this means for the licensing/trust question specifically
Licensing and background checks land fourth of six, ahead of an easy booking process and a strong online presence, but well behind price and reviews. That's a real, if modest, data point on a question this vertical's marketing gets asked about constantly — whether displaying a licence number or trade certification meaningfully moves a hiring decision.
What this figure can't answer is causation, or even correlation measured on the customer side: it's an owner's belief about what customers weigh, not a controlled test of what happens to conversion when a licence badge is added or removed from a page — the kind of measured trust-signal effect our local conversion rate statistics page collects wherever it has been properly studied.
A sampled, customer-side study directly measuring how a displayed licence or certification independently shifts a home-service hiring decision was not identified in the sources reviewed on 8 September 2026 — searches of the Better Business Bureau's public trust research, the National Association of the Remodeling Industry's consumer resources, and Angi's own consumer-facing content on the topic turned up no working, sampled study on this specific question, only pages that assert the importance of licensing without a measurement behind the assertion.
The honest position is that licensing is plausibly a real trust signal — HIRI's own tracker separately notes that homeowners turn to professionals specifically for projects requiring "specialized training, certifications, or tools and equipment," naming HVAC, major plumbing, electrical work and roofing as examples — but the size of its effect on a hiring decision, isolated from price and reviews, remains unmeasured in what this review could find.
Most home service businesses report being near full capacity — but the granular seasonal picture doesn't exist yet
Two real data points on demand, from two different surveys, followed by an honest account of what this page's research could not find: a segmented, dated study of seasonal or emergency-versus-planned demand by trade.
80%
Grade Bof home service businesses surveyed say they're fully booked or close to it; only 3% report trouble filling their schedule, and 1% say they aren't scheduling due to seasonality.
What it does not say This is a snapshot taken in December, and the report doesn't break the 1% seasonality figure down by trade — so it can't say whether an HVAC business in July reports the same low seasonality-idle figure as a landscaping business in January. Treat the topline capacity figure as real and current; treat the seasonality figure as too coarse to plan around.
30% vs 27%
Grade Cof homeowners plan to spend less on home improvement over the next 12 months, against 27% who plan to spend more.
What it does not say Graded down specifically because this wave's sample size isn't published where the figure is quoted, even though the organisation and the recurring tracker behind it are genuine — the same rule this site applies everywhere a real source doesn't disclose its number.
| Status | Share of homeowners |
|---|---|
| Completed a home improvement project in the last 90 days | 38% |
| Received a quote for a project that has not started yet | 27% |
| Have no home improvement project planned for the next 12 months | 28% |
Sample size not disclosed in the public summary reviewed. These three figures describe different, possibly overlapping groups of homeowners, not a single funnel that sums to 100%. Source: Home Improvement Research Institute, Q2 2026 Home Improvement Project Activity Tracker
What this means, and what genuinely isn't known yet
Read together, these figures describe a market where most providers are close to capacity and roughly a quarter of homeowners are actively sitting on an unstarted, already-quoted project — which is a real, if unglamorous, planning signal: a meaningful share of demand is already in the pipeline rather than needing to be generated from nothing.
Slightly more homeowners plan to pull back on spending than plan to increase it over the coming year, a soft headwind worth naming plainly rather than around.
What this page's research could not find, despite a genuine search, is the more specific question most home-service marketers actually ask: how much of demand is seasonal by trade — HVAC in extreme-temperature months, roofing after storm events, landscaping by growing season — and how much of it is same-day or emergency versus planned and considered.
That search covered the US Bureau of Labor Statistics' published economic commentary, ServiceTitan's own research pages, CallRail's report library, Yelp's economic data releases, Angi's newsroom, HomeAdvisor's True Cost Report, and Porch Group's research pages; several returned no accessible content and none published a dated, sampled figure answering either question at the level of a specific trade.
No substantial study measuring aggregate seasonal search or lead volume by home-service trade, or a sampled emergency-versus-planned demand split, was identified in the sources reviewed on 8 September 2026. That the pattern is intuitively real — a business without air conditioning in August is not a considered purchase — is a reasonable inference from how these trades work, not a measurement this page can point to; treat it as informed opinion, not data, until a proper study turns up.
The share of homeowners blending DIY and a paid pro nearly doubled year over year — worth flagging, not yet a trend
One further HIRI finding, from the same tracker as the referral figure at the top of this page, comparing the same quarter one year apart. A two-point comparison is a real data point and not yet evidence of a sustained direction — that distinction matters here specifically.
46% vs 23%
Grade Cof homeowners report using both DIY and a hired contractor on their most recent project in Q1 2026, up from 23% in the equivalent Q1 2025 survey wave.
What it does not say Real and specific, but two data points a year apart is a comparison, not yet a trend line — a single unusual quarter, a change in how the question was asked, or a one-off market condition could all produce a jump this size without a lasting behavioural shift behind it. Worth watching in HIRI's future quarterly waves rather than treating as settled.
What this means for how "hiring a pro" actually gets decided
If this figure holds up across further quarters, it complicates a simple DIY-versus-hire framing: a growing share of projects may not be one or the other, but a homeowner doing part of the work themselves and hiring a professional for the rest — plausibly the part requiring licensed trade work specifically.
HIRI's own tracker names the projects homeowners say they still hand to a professional: those requiring "specialized training, certifications, or tools and equipment," with HVAC, major plumbing, electrical work and roofing given as examples.
Read against the licensing finding above, that's a more coherent story than either figure tells alone — homeowners may be increasingly willing to do the parts of a project that don't require a licence, while still reaching for a licensed pro on the parts that legally or practically require one.
That reading is an interpretation of two separate findings, not a single measurement of the connection between them, and it deserves to be labelled as such.
What the evidence covers
This data describes the US home services market. No equivalent published study of how homeowners find contractors in other markets — where WhatsApp groups, local community apps or different trade licensing norms operate — was identified in the sources reviewed on 8 September 2026.
The numbers that did not survive the trace
These appear in current statistics roundups. Each one fails on provenance, and quoting them transfers the failure to you.
78%
Do not citeof customers hire the first home service provider to respond to their enquiry, attributed to a "Podium Home Services Report, 2026".
Traced to Circulates on marketing-agency blogs and vendor pages, attributed to Podium.
No report matching this description was found published anywhere on podium.com as of this review — its resource centre, its dedicated home-services resource pages, and a guessed direct URL for a "State of Home Services" report all returned either no matching content or a 404. This is the same failure pattern documented on this site's lead response time statistics page for a related, similarly unattributed "42 minutes / 28% / 62%" figure claimed of ServiceTitan. Both figures are directionally plausible — speed almost certainly helps win a job — but neither has a working link to an underlying study, a sample size, or a stated method, which is what makes a number citeable rather than merely repeated.
How this page is made and how to cite it
The HIRI figures were traced to the organisation's own quarterly tracker and its Q2 2026 wave specifically.
The Jobber figures were traced to the Blue Collar Strong 2026 report directly, reading the channel, selection-criteria and capacity sections separately from the response-time findings already published elsewhere on this site, to avoid duplicating a finding rather than adding one. The CPL figure is shared with our local lead generation statistics page.
Last verified: 8 September 2026. Reviewed quarterly, matching HIRI's own tracker cadence.
Preferred citation Parashar, S. (2026). Home services marketing statistics, traced to source. shrutiparashar.com/statistics/home-services-marketing/
Questions
- How do most homeowners find a contractor?
- Mostly through relationship: 31% through prior experience with that specific pro and 31% through a referral from friends or family — roughly 62% combined — per the Home Improvement Research Institute's Quarterly Homeowner Project Activity Tracker (n=1,198, fielded March-April 2026). This closely parallels the pattern found in real estate, where roughly 61% of buyers found their agent through relationship rather than new lead generation.
- What does it cost to generate a home services lead?
- $90.92 on average in search advertising, the third-highest figure among local verticals measured, against a $66.69 all-industry average, per LocaliQ's Search Advertising Benchmarks (2025-2026 data).
- Which marketing channel produces the most leads for home service businesses?
- Referrals and repeat customers, each named by 59% of the 1,050 home service business owners Jobber surveyed for its 2026 Blue Collar Strong report — well ahead of Facebook (32%), Google Search (20%) and Google Local Services Ads (19%), the next-strongest channels measured. It's a multi-select question, so those figures don't sum to 100%, but the ranking is clear: relationship-driven leads outscore every paid or organic digital channel in the survey.
- Do businesses that use more marketing channels actually perform better?
- Jobber's own platform data shows its top-performing customers — by revenue, operational maturity and a 70%+ quote close rate — consistently use 3 to 5 lead sources rather than one. That's internal data with an undisclosed sample and method, so it's directional rather than a controlled test, but it's consistent with standard marketing advice: a single-channel home service business is running a narrower operation than the ones this survey describes as doing best.
- Does having a trade licence or certification actually help win the job?
- Partially answered, not fully. 22% of the home service business owners Jobber surveyed believe safety, background checks or licensing is a top factor customers weigh — fourth of six factors listed, behind price (62%) and reviews (51%). That figure is owner-reported perception, not a direct customer survey, and no sampled, customer-side study measuring how a displayed licence independently moves a hiring decision was identified in the sources reviewed on 8 September 2026. Licensing is plausibly a real trust signal — HIRI's tracker notes homeowners specifically reach for professionals on projects requiring specialised training or certification, such as HVAC, major plumbing, electrical work and roofing — but its isolated effect on conversion remains unmeasured in what this review could find.
- Is home services demand actually seasonal, with real data behind it?
- Almost certainly, in the everyday sense that an HVAC breakdown in August or a roofing job after a storm behaves differently from a considered landscaping project — but no substantial, dated, sampled study measuring aggregate search or lead volume seasonality by home-service trade was identified in the sources reviewed on 8 September 2026, despite checking the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, ServiceTitan, CallRail, Yelp, Angi, HomeAdvisor and Porch Group's published research. The closest available data point — that only 1% of the home service businesses Jobber surveyed say they aren't scheduling due to seasonality — is a single December snapshot, not a trade-by-trade or month-by-month breakdown, and shouldn't be read as a substitute for the study that doesn't yet exist.
- What share of a home service business's work is emergency or same-day versus planned?
- No substantial study answering this with a published sample and method was identified in the sources reviewed on 8 September 2026. It's a reasonable, widely-held operational assumption — plumbing and HVAC skew more emergency-driven than landscaping or remodelling — but this page could not find a dated, sampled figure attaching a real percentage to that assumption, and one should be treated with real scepticism wherever it appears without a working source link.
- Are homeowners doing more of the work themselves instead of hiring a pro?
- One real data point suggests a shift worth watching rather than a settled trend: the share of homeowners reporting they used both DIY and a hired contractor on their most recent project rose to 46% in Q1 2026, from 23% in the equivalent Q1 2025 survey wave, per HIRI's tracker. That's two data points a year apart, not a multi-quarter trend line, and the Q1 2025 wave's sample size wasn't disclosed in what this review could find — real, but worth treating as an early signal rather than an established pattern.
- What do homeowners actually plan to spend on home improvement this year?
- Slightly more plan to cut back than plan to increase: 30% of homeowners expect to spend less on home improvement over the next 12 months against 27% who expect to spend more, per HIRI's Q2 2026 tracker. Separately, 38% completed a project in the last 90 days and 27% have an unstarted project they've already received a quote for — meaning a real share of demand is already sitting in the pipeline rather than needing to be generated from nothing. This wave's sample size wasn't published in the summary this page could access, which is noted plainly in the underlying record.
- Is the '78% hire the first provider to respond' statistic real?
- No working source for it could be found. It circulates online attributed to a 'Podium Home Services Report, 2026', but no such report was located anywhere on Podium's own site as of this review — its resource centre and a guessed direct report URL returned no matching content. It sits alongside a related, similarly unattributed figure claimed of ServiceTitan and documented on this site's lead response time statistics page. Both are plausible in direction; neither is currently citeable.
Related reading: how each grade on this page was assigned , Local lead generation statistics , Lead response time statistics , Real estate lead statistics , Home services marketing .
For the numbers on adjacent topics, see the rest of the archive.
