Home-service cost inflation, 2018-2025

National fixed-panel trends

Rows are sorted exactly as nationalTrends() returns them: largest percentage change first. The medians are permit declared values, not modeled homeowner invoices.

How we measured it

Median declared construction value by permit filing year, 2018–2025. Metro series track one fixed jurisdiction; the national series pools a fixed panel of metros present in every year, so neither can be an artifact of the dataset's coverage changing over time. A declared-value median moves with both price and the mix of projects filed each year — it is not a pure price index. Each year shown clears the 30-permit minimum. To keep every series an honest price signal we drop any whose median more than triples or falls below a third across the window (a project-mix or permit-definition shift, not price), and we publish general-contractor only at the pooled national level, never per-metro, since one city's GC median swings with project size, not price.

In plain English: each metro line tracks one jurisdiction against itself over time. Each national line pools the same set of metros across the window, so a trade does not look more expensive just because a higher-cost city entered the dataset later. The trade labels come from permit type classification, and the values are medians by filing year after the minimum sample rule clears.

Notable single-jurisdiction metro movers

These are metro-scope series ranked by absolute percentage change. They are useful local signals, but each row is one jurisdiction's permit mix, not a national trade trend.