Australian Renovation Spending Has Jumped 45%, And Homeowners Are Paying the Price
A data-led analysis of Australian residential renovation spending and homeowner sentiment, produced by Buildmat.
Key Findings
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The median cost for a standard bathroom renovation now sits at $30,000, up from the $21,000 average previously reported by industry platforms.
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A Reddit sentiment analysis revealed homeowners received quotes exceeding $30,000 before a fixture was purchased, driven by severe trade shortages.
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Vanity and storage deficits hold the highest regret rate (46%). Homeowners consistently regretted sacrificing drawer space for minimalist designs, or choosing cheap cabinetry that warped under bathroom moisture.
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Western Australia leads the nation in renovation spending growth (+81.7% over 5 years), followed by South Australia (+55.0%) and New South Wales (+49.0%).
According to the latest data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) analysed by Buildmat, residential renovation spending reached $14.2 billion in 2024 – a 45.2% increase over five years. Despite rising interest rates and cost-of-living pressures, Australians are spending more on altering and adding to their homes than at any point in recent history.
But behind the macroeconomic data lies a more complex reality. To understand how this $14.2 billion is actually being spent, Buildmat conducted a sentiment analysis of 2,500 renovation-related comments across Australia's most active home improvement forums over the past 12 months. The data reveals a clear disconnect between what Australians expect to pay, what they actually pay, and what they regret once the dust settles.
The Macro Picture: A $14.2 Billion Boom
The ABS Building Activity data paints a picture of a market that refused to cool. In 2020, Australians spent $9.78 billion on residential alterations and additions. By the end of 2024 that figure had climbed to $14.20 billion, with the most recent quarterly data (Q3 2025) showing national spending still accelerating at 8.7% year-on-year.
State-by-State Growth (2020–2024):
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Western Australia: +81.7%
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South Australia: +55.0%
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New South Wales: +49.0%
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Queensland: +47.8%
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Victoria: +35.7%
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That volume of spending is colliding directly with supply chain and labour realities. Master Builders Australia Chief Economist Shane Garrett recently noted that building cost pressures are at their worst in almost two years.“House building costs had been decelerating for much of 2025, but those days are history. Recently, we have seen an escalation in the cost of home building materials while continued labour shortages magnify the damage,” Garrett stated. “A new house is now 47 per cent more expensive than it was just before the pandemic.”
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The Micro Reality: What Are Australians Actually Paying?
While the ABS tracks the macro billions, an analysis of renovation cost figures shared by Australians online shows what those increases look like at the household level.
The "standard" bathroom renovation – once reliably budgeted at $15,000 to $20,000 – has fundamentally shifted. HiPages currently advises that an average bathroom renovation costs $26,000 (up from $21,000 previously), while large-scale projects can now run anywhere between $100,000 and $300,000.
Our sentiment data confirms the shift: the median reported renovation cost across the dataset is $30,000, with a mean of $39,592 driven upward by a subset of major structural and premium architectural builds.
Two patterns dominate the cost data:
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The labour-only trap. A recurring theme is the shock of quotes that arrive before a product has been selected. Multiple homeowners reported labour-only quotes exceeding $30,000 – meaning the full project cost begins at $50,000 or more once fixtures are factored in.
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The blowout factor. Where budgets blew out, they blew out hard. The data captured multiple instances of $40,000 estimates escalating past $60,000 once structural realities – asbestos removal, plumbing relocation – were uncovered mid-project.
"The $30,000 median reflects what customers are telling us builders are quoting right now for a standard strip-and-replace bathroom in any major capital city – and that's before a single fixture has been selected,” said Vivian Garzon, Head of Product at Buildmat.
“What's interesting is how that is changing purchasing behaviour. Homeowners are becoming far more considered about where the remaining budget goes. They're investing in fixtures that will last – tapware, vanities, fittings – because when you've just spent $30,000 on labour, the last thing you want is to be back in a renovation in five years."
The flow-on effects are being felt beyond the renovation market itself. "We have seen a clear shift in buyer preferences away from renovators toward completed homes since the trade shortage became evident during the homebuilder phase," says Cate Bakos, Melbourne buyer's advocate. "Buyers quickly learned there was a real surcharge attached to renovation – trade shortages, freight cost increases, materials shortages. There's now an obvious segmentation in the market between fully renovated options and homes requiring work. The latter could be considered bargain buys."
The Regret Factor: Where the Money Goes Wrong
When you're spending upwards of $30,000 on a single room, the cost of a mistake is high. Across the 2,500-comment dataset, Buildmat identified and analysed 109 comments containing clear regret signals – cases where homeowners explicitly stated they would do things differently, warned others against a specific choice, or admitted a costly mistake.
Bathrooms and vanities were the most discussed categories overall, but volume doesn't equal regret. When mapped by regret rate – the percentage of mentions that included a clear regret signal – a specific hierarchy emerged.
1. The Vanity and Storage Deficit (46% regret rate)
Nearly half of all vanity and storage mentions were linked to regret, the highest rate of any major category. The primary complaint wasn't aesthetic but functional. Homeowners consistently regretted sacrificing drawer space for minimalist designs, or choosing cabinetry that warped under bathroom moisture.
"A floating, minimalist vanity looks incredible on a TikTok feed or a Pinterest board, but if it doesn't have the drawer capacity for your actual life, you'll regret it every single morning," says Garzon. "It's why we recommend vanity ranges with deep-drawer configurations and High Moisture Resistant (HMR) materials.”
2. The Tile and Flooring Trap (45% regret rate)
The second highest regret rate belonged to tiles and flooring. The data revealed a clear split: homeowners regretted either choosing highly textured tiles that were impossible to clean, or dark floor tiles that showed every drop of water and speck of dust.
3. The Shower Configuration (38% regret rate)
While bathrooms were the most discussed room overall, 38% of those mentions carried a regret signal. The most common specific complaint was the shower-over-bath combination, followed by open showers that failed to contain water or heat.
"A renovation is one of the most significant financial events a household will undertake," concludes Garzon. "The homeowners who are happiest with their investment years later are the ones who balanced aesthetic desires with the hard realities of daily use and maintenance."
Methodology
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Macro Data: National and state-level renovation spending figures are sourced from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Building Activity, Australia, Original Series, Current Prices, covering "Alterations and additions including conversions – Total Residential” between 2024 and Q3 2025.
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Sentiment Analysis: Buildmat analysed 2,500 comments from the top 25 most-engaged renovation threads on r/AusRenovation over the 12 months to March 2026. A keyword-based extraction and sentiment analysis was applied to identify specific renovation cost mentions and clear regret signals. Regret rates were calculated by dividing the number of regret signals in a category by the total number of mentions for that category.
