Americans are proactive homeowners, but this country beats them in DIY home repairs
Sheeka Sanahori Feature Impact
There is always something: a leaky faucet, chipping paint, gutters full of leaves or a room that no longer works the way it used to. Homeownership comes with a permanent background hum of maintenance, repairs and decisions that can only be ignored for so long. What homeowners do next depends a lot on where they live.
A new international study from Angi, a home services marketplace, found that Americans are among the world’s more proactive homeowners, with nearly half (49%) taking a preventative approach to maintenance, scheduling regular checks and staying on top of concerns before something breaks. South Korea leads the study at 56%. Japan sits at the other end: 60% of Japanese homeowners address issues only when they arise.
When it comes to DIY home repairs, France leads the study. Sixty-five percent of French homeowners say they handle most repairs themselves, the highest rate among the surveyed countries. Home care, it turns out, looks fundamentally different depending on where people live and what they believe home is for. Cultural differences are also at play for homeowner behavior beyond the toolbox. In France, two out of five homeowners enforce a no-phones rule at the dinner table, the highest rate in the study, while Canadians and Japanese are nearly twice as likely as Americans to require shoes off at the door (69% vs. 37%).
Opinions vary from country to country, even for keeping a tidy home. A majority of Germans and Americans prefer to keep a “lived-in and comfortable” appearance. Forty percent of Brazilians believe a home should always be clean and tidy, more than any other country. Of all the countries surveyed, the Dutch were the most likely to respond with “home is for living, not impressing others.”
In North America, homeownership
tends to be tied to investment. Americans and Canadians are the most likely of any country to renovate specifically to increase property value, while many European homeowners prioritize comfort and quality of life over resale potential. When a home no longer fits, the instinct varies just as sharply: More than threequarters of German homeowners would renovate rather than move, the highest rate across all countries surveyed, while 41% of British homeowners would rather relocate. Americans take a more pragmatic middle path; 37% say they would stay and make do.
Unexpected and emergency repairs remain a universal source of stress regardless of the country. The most maintenance-minded Americans are also the youngest: Gen Z and Millennial homeowners lead on proactive upkeep, with 51% preferring to check home systems before problems start and 55% using smart security technology compared with 19% of Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation.
A home is never just the structure itself. It reflects the routines, priorities and tradeoffs people make, from the repairs they tackle to the rituals that shape daily life. Around the world, home care is less about one right way to do it and more about what people believe a home is supposed to be.
Methodology
Angi, along with its international family of home service marketplaces, commissioned an online survey of 4,492 homeowners across 10 countries, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Australia, South Korea, Japan and Brazil. The U.S. sample included 1,237 homeowners. The margin of error for U.S. findings is plus or minus 2.8 percentage points at a 95% confidence level. Fieldwork was conducted May 1-19, 2026.
3.7% year over year in June, extending the growth streak to seven consecutive months — the longest such run since December 2020 through June 2021. And there is no sign that rising pending sales are masking a wave of broken deals: contract cancellations in April and May came in at 6.9% of pending sales, modestly below the 7.3% rate a year ago. Taken together, the data pushes back on the concern that rising pending sales are masking a wave of deals falling apart. Homes are going under contract, and they are staying there.
New listings rose 2.4% year over year to 463,480, led by strong gains in the Northeast (+12.6%) and supported by modest growth in the Midwest (+1%), South (+1.0%) and West (+0.2%).
One concern entering summer was whether sellers would pull listings at the pace seen last year. That fear has not materialized. Delistings — homes pulled from the market without a sale — are now down nearly 10% year over year in June, and sit at roughly 5% of active listings, near their lowest share since last year’s surge began.
Inventory grows
Active inventory reached 1,102,615 in June, up 4.1% from May and 1.9% from a year ago. Year-over-year growth decelerated slightly from 2.2% last month, extending a gradual cooling trend that has been running since last spring. Nationwide inventory remains 11.3% below typical 2017–19 levels, a slightly wider gap than the 10.4% shortfall recorded in May.
Inventory gains were led by the Northeast (+8.5% year over year) and Midwest (+7.3%), while the South (-0.1%) and West (+0.3%) remained nearly flat. Among the top 50 metros, 35 recorded year-over-year inventory
growth. The sharpest increases were in Louisville, Ky. (+28.7%), Buffalo, N.Y. (+27.7%), and Seattle (+20.6%).
A meaningful milestone
The median home spent 53 days on the market in June, identical to the same month a year ago. That ended a streak of 26 consecutive months in which homes sold more slowly than the prior year — a notable milestone that suggests the market’s deceleration has fully normalized. The median home is now spending the same amount of time on market as the pre-pandemic norm.
The regional picture varies, but not nearly as much as other metrics. Time on market is lower than a year ago in the Northeast (-2 days), where fresh inventory appears to be energizing transactions in historically tight markets. Days on market ticked up modestly in the Midwest (+3) and West (+2), and held flat in the South. At the metro level, time on market fell the most in Jacksonville, Fla. (-8 days) and Richmond, Va. (-6 days), while Boston, Memphis, and Oklahoma City each saw increases of six days.
Looking ahead
“July is when the market traditionally takes its foot off the gas — spring listings age, buyer urgency fades, activity slows,” said Krimmel. “June already shows the first signs of a slight seasonal slowdown: price cuts ticked up to 18.5% of current listings, and new listings were flat from last month even as they remained above last year. We’ll be watching whether homes start sitting longer, whether price cuts accelerate beyond the usual summer ramp up, and whether new listings genuinely pull back or just flatten out. So far, the leading indicators are holding, so we do not expect the market to stall out like it did last summer.”
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