There’s no escaping the news that inflation has been on the rise over the years. While inflation has softened—dropping from its near 10% peak—it is still rising at a rate of more than 6% each month. This is pushing the prices of everything up, but some industries have been hit worse than others. The home repair industry, whether we’re talking about appliance repair or larger systems like plumbing, electrical, and HVAC, has seen a big increase in prices. This trend continues even today.
Why are prices rising in this industry so quickly? What is making appliances and home repairs so expensive? Most importantly, how can homeowners mitigate these impacts? Find out what’s making your home repairs so much more expensive than they were just a few years ago.
Why Prices Are Up
The prices of most repairs are up for several reason:
- Raw material costs: everything from lumber to sheet metal, semiconductors, and other components are significantly up in price. This impacts the overall price of repairs and replacement of many different home components.
- Supply chain shortages: we may be more than a year out of the pandemic, but most industries are still facing supply chain shortages on products and components, especially those coming from overseas. There’s still a significant amount of congestion at the nation’s ports, and products are having a hard time getting into the country. When there are shortages of parts and products, prices increase until the market can balance supply with demand.
- Labor shortages: labor is still a lingering issue for many industries, which also increases prices. When there are worker shortages, there is less production, and those remaining in their positions tend to have wage increases, which also hikes up prices.
- Fuel costs: whether things are moved by air, rail, ocean, or road, fuel has a heavy impact on their price. Although the cost of fuel has dropped recently, it’s still up when compared to where it was a few years ago. Higher fuel prices mean it costs more to ship and move goods, which further increases their prices.
Which Prices are Up?
When something breaks in your home, whether it’s an appliance or part of your electrical or plumbing system, there are generally two courses of action; replace it or repair it. Regardless of what homeowners are looking to do, they are going to be paying more out of pocket to fix whatever is causing the issue in their home.
As of the end of 2022, these are the increases in prices that would impact home repairs and replaced systems/parts:
- Appliances prices are up by more than 11%
- HVAC prices have increased by about 8%
- Plumbing pipe prices have increased between 80-100% (depending on the material)
How Homeowners Can Mitigate the Rising Influence of Inflation
There’s nothing homeowners can do to bring down prices, it’s simply a waiting (and hoping) game to ride out inflation and wait for markets to stabilize. What they can do in the meantime is limit what they would pay should something need to be repaired or replaced in their home. The best, most affordable way to do that is with one of our home protection plans.
These plans allow homeowners like you to cover 17 Appliances and up to four major home systems (plumbing, electrical, HVAC, etc.) Should anything break in your home or need to be replaced, you pay very little out of pocket, and everything else is covered. If you need a new furnace or air conditioner, new washer or dryer, or anything else under the plan, you only pay a set rate, regardless of inflation!
Protect yourself from rising prices with a home protection plan from Everything Breaks today!
