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Renovation and repair expenditures are an important component of the U.S. housing market and have grown in importance relative to new construction as a source of housing supply. However, this aspect of the housing supply process is not well understood and the existing literature on the topic is relatively sparse. This paper focuses on one aspect of renovation and repair expenditures: the choice of a contractor job or a project mainly undertaken by the homeowner. The empirical work stresses the importance of looking at different categories of renovation expenditures separately. Household characteristics are important determinants of the homeowner's decision to hire someone else to do the work. Married couple households and other households with more adults are less likely to hire outside labor, all else equal. Higher household income and more years of education increase the probability of hiring outside labor. Black households have a significantly lower likelihood of performing their own renovations than white households with comparable characteristics and comparable housing units.
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