If your 2026 home-improvement list is all small home repairs — a leaky faucet, a sagging gate, a dead outlet — and none of the big-ticket remodel you once planned, you’re in very good company. This week Home Depot (Tuesday, August 18) and Lowe’s (Wednesday, August 19) reported their second-quarter results, and the two biggest home-improvement retailers in North America described the same homeowner: fixing what’s broken, spending a little more per visit, and putting the gut renovation on hold.
What Home Depot and Lowe’s Actually Reported
Home Depot’s quarter beat expectations: sales rose 5.7% to $47.9 billion and comparable sales were up 1.7%. But look under the hood. Customer transactions fell 0.8% to 443 million, while the average ticket rose 2.8% to $92.50. Growth came from bigger receipts, not more shoppers. CFO Richard McPhail said customers “continued to engage in smaller projects” and described the backdrop as “frozen housing market conditions,” noting that housing turnover “has never been lower as a percentage of the housing stock.” The company kept its full-year outlook unchanged.
Lowe’s had the rougher week. Sales climbed 8% to $25.96 billion — mostly from acquisitions — but comparable sales rose just 0.2%, comparable transactions dropped 2.1%, and the company cut its full-year guidance to the bottom of its prior range. Management cited “persistent” pressure on discretionary do-it-yourself spending; CEO Marvin Ellison told CNBC he expects homeowners to keep watching their wallets through year-end. What held the quarter up? Pro, online and home services — its fifth straight quarter of positive comps, carried by contractors rather than weekend DIYers.
One more detail worth filing away: Ellison said competitors used tariff refunds to slash prices on grills, patio furniture and live plants in July, and Lowe’s declined to match. If you’ve been eyeing an outdoor purchase, the end-of-season clearance this year is unusually aggressive.
Why Small Home Repairs Are Winning
The pattern isn’t new — we flagged the DIY-to-pro shift ahead of these reports, and the spending split between skip-it and go-big households earlier this month. But now both retailers have put numbers on it, and the explanation is the housing market itself.
- Nobody is moving. Mortgage rates drifted back up to about 6.65% this week, near the year’s highs, and owners with 3% loans are staying put. The big renovations that traditionally follow a sale — new kitchen, finished basement — simply aren’t being triggered. The same lock-in is playing out in Canada, where renovation prices rose another 2.3% in Q2 even as homeowners trimmed scope.
- Homes are aging in place. Roughly seven in ten US owners live in a home more than 20 years old, and those homes generate repairs on their own schedule: water heaters, roofs, HVAC, windows. That work can’t be deferred the way a remodel can.
- Prices per visit keep rising. Average tickets up 2–3% at both chains echo the home service price data we covered yesterday — invoices are growing faster than job counts across the trades, too.
What This Means for Homeowners
The small-project economy cuts both ways for you.
The good news: materials for seasonal and outdoor projects are on sale, and retailers are pouring money into pro services, same-day delivery and contractor tools that ultimately make your repair job faster to complete. Home Depot’s nationwide express delivery of parts in under three hours is a direct result of this pro pivot.
The catch: you are competing with millions of other households for the same small-job capacity. A plumber choosing between your $250 faucet swap and a contractor’s $25,000 repipe will prioritize the repeat customer — unless you make your job easy to say yes to. Three ways to do that:
- Bundle your small fixes. A single visit that handles the faucet, the running toilet and the outdoor spigot is far more attractive to a pro (and cheaper per task for you) than three separate calls.
- Post the job with a clear scope and budget. Photos, measurements, and a fair price range get faster, better offers than “need a handyman.” On MastersGuild you post once and let verified pros come to you — find a plumber near you or an electrician for small repairs without making a dozen calls.
- Book before the fall rush. We said it last week and the earnings confirmed it: pros’ calendars are filling with exactly this kind of work. Mid-August is the time to book furnace checks, gutter cleaning and weather-sealing before demand peaks.
What This Means for Local Pros
If you run a crew, the retailers just told you where the money is: small-ticket, high-frequency repair and maintenance, increasingly done-for-me rather than DIY. The pros winning this market quote fast, set a sensible minimum charge, and treat the $300 job as the front door to the $3,000 one. The retailers are betting billions that you — not the DIY cart — are their future customer. Act like it.
The Bottom Line
Home Depot and Lowe’s confirmed what your own to-do list already knew: 2026 is the year of small home repairs. Big remodels will come back when people start moving again — and there’s “no sign of an inflection point” yet, in McPhail’s words. Until then, the smart play is to keep up with the fixes that can’t wait, buy seasonal materials while they’re discounted, and get your small jobs in front of good pros before everyone else does.
