Remodeling and design website Houzz has launched a home remodeling pricing tool that allows consumers to discover actual, location-specific costs of different types of renovation projects and connect with relevant pros.
The “Houzz Real Cost Finder” tool, built from a survey of more than 100,000 homeowners from across the U.S., presents the average costs for each of 20 different types of projects, including full home remodels or projects like kitchens, bathrooms, pools, decks and patios.
Users can see costs by city or state, and the tool also surfaces the average costs of projects in the lower-, middle- and upper-third price ranges for each location.
“The Houzz Real Cost Finder gives renovation and decorating data we’ve collected back to our community, empowering homeowners to make the best decisions for their projects,” said Adi Tatarko, Houzz’s CEO and co-founder, in a statement.
Along with the home renovation price estimates by location, the tool pulls remodels of similar project types in a location from its database of 1.7 million images and presents a list of local professionals by specialty.
The home improvement space has been a hot commodity this year as companies look to sell advertising to the home remodeling industry, which saw $300 billion in consumer spending in 2012, according to Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.
In February, Zillow launched its own home improvement platform Zillow Digs with a remodeling price tool, known as Digs Estimates, for projects featured on the site. Consumers using Digs can get regionally-adjusted price estimates on materials and labor for a particular bathroom or kitchen that has a Digs Estimate on the site.
In March, Houzz expanded its paid marketing service from 12 markets to 425, and added new analytics tools.
Angie’s List, HomeAdvisor (formerly ServiceMagic) and New York City-focused theSweeten are other sites designed to steer consumers to contractors listed in their directories.
In May, Houzz opened up its directory platform to real estate agents. As of Tuesday morning, more than 1,000 agents were in the Houzz system.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with more detail about Zillow Digs Estimates.
