What new homeowners spend in their first 90 days (and what they're shopping for)

Talk to any home services vendor who serves the residential market, and they’ll tell you the same thing: there’s a window after a home sale closes when the new homeowner spends real money on home services in a concentrated burst. Then it tapers off into normal maintenance patterns.

How real is this window? Big enough that it shapes the economics of an entire category of vendors. Big enough that vendors with the right positioning at closing time outperform vendors without it by an order of magnitude.

I want to make this concrete with numbers. What follows is drawn from NAR’s 2024 Home Buyer and Seller Generational Trends study, our own ClosingPack vendor interviews, and what we’ve seen running LoadUp for ten years as a junk removal marketplace that serves a disproportionate share of post-closing customers.

The 90-day spending number

The median new homeowner spends approximately $3,400 on home services in the 90 days after closing. The 75th percentile spends around $5,200. The 90th percentile spends over $9,000.

These numbers vary a lot based on buyer profile:

Buyer profile	Median 90-day spend
First-time buyer	$4,100
Repeat buyer	$2,800
Out-of-state mover	$5,200
Buyer with kids under 18	$4,400
Luxury buyer (top 20% of price)	$11,700

The pattern is roughly: the less infrastructure a buyer brings to the new home (no existing vendor relationships, no nearby family, no DIY skills), the more they spend.

This matters because the buyers who spend the most are exactly the buyers who most need vendor recommendations. Out-of-state movers don’t know who to call. First-time buyers don’t know what they don’t know. These are the buyers who’ll thank an agent profusely for a vetted painter recommendation.

Where the money actually goes

Top categories by share of buyers who spend in them within 90 days:

• Cleaning (78% of new buyers). Median spend per buyer who uses: $340. This includes both move-in deep cleans and the first one to three recurring cleans before some buyers settle into a longer-term arrangement.
• Painting (52%). Median: $1,200. The most common project is one to three interior rooms, often the master bedroom, kids’ rooms, or a feature wall. Whole-house repaints are less common but skew the average up significantly when they happen.
• Moving services (47%). Median: $1,800. Mostly local moves. Long-distance movers spend more but represent a smaller share.
• Handyman work (44%). Median: $420. Hanging TVs, mounting curtains, assembling furniture, small repairs from inspection.
• Landscaping or yard cleanup (39%). Median: $580. Heavy in spring and fall closings.
• Junk removal (34%). Median: $310. Two patterns: previous-owner junk left behind, and homeowner-generated junk from the move (old furniture, boxes, packing materials).
• HVAC service or repair (28%). Median: $480. Concentrated in the first 30 days as systems get their first real workout under the new owner.
• Locksmith or rekeying (22%). Median: $180. Most often happens in the first week.

These percentages overlap. Most buyers use 3 to 5 of these categories within 90 days. A small percentage use all of them.

The structure of the window

The 90-day window isn’t uniform. Spending is concentrated heavily in the first 30 days, with a long tail.

Days 1-7: Locksmith, cleaning, movers, junk removal. These are the move-in essentials. The vendor who’s the agent’s preferred locksmith gets called on day 2. The cleaner usually gets called for a deep clean before furniture arrives.

Days 8-30: Handyman, basic painting, HVAC inspection. The homeowner has settled in enough to start a punch list. Inspection-flagged items get addressed. Decisions about wall colors get made.

Days 31-60: Larger painting projects, landscaping, custom work. The bigger discretionary purchases. By this point the homeowner has had time to live in the space and figure out what bothers them.

Days 61-90: Specialty work, ongoing arrangements, things that got deferred. Window cleaning, gutter cleaning, lawn service contracts.

After day 90, home service spending settles into a much steadier pattern that looks more like ongoing maintenance than acute spend. The window matters because it concentrates so much spend into so little time.

Why this matters for vendors

If you’re a home service vendor reading this, here’s the strategic implication: the new homeowner is a uniquely high-value customer because they’re spending a lot, fast, and they have no existing vendor relationships in this category yet. Whoever serves them first usually keeps them.

A new homeowner who hires you for a one-time job during the 90-day window has roughly a 38% chance of becoming a repeat customer in the following year, compared to about 14% for a customer found through traditional advertising. Once you’ve done good work on their new house, you’re their guy.

This is why being on an agent’s preferred vendor pack is structurally more valuable than running ads on Angi or Thumbtack. The Angi lead is a one-shot. The agent referral is a relationship that converts at higher rates and produces customers who become repeats.

Why this matters for agents

If you’re an agent reading this, the implication is more subtle. You’re already making vendor recommendations in this window. You’re already creating real economic value for the vendors you recommend. The question is just whether that value flows back to you in any structured way.

A typical agent closing 20 homes a year is generating around $68,000 of post-closing home service spending each year through their buyer clients (20 buyers × $3,400 median). The agent steers a meaningful share of that spending through their recommendations.

Even if you assume conservative numbers, the vendors who win those recommendations are capturing tens of thousands of dollars of revenue annually from your buyer pool. That revenue has historically flowed entirely to the vendor with zero share back to the agent doing the matchmaking.

This is the dynamic ClosingPack is built to change. Not by taking value from the homeowner or the vendor, but by formalizing the agent’s role as the curator and attaching a small payment stream to the recommendations the agent was already making.

What seller-side spending looks like

Sellers also spend in a concentrated window, but it’s different. The pre-listing prep window typically runs 30 to 60 days before the home goes on the market.

Median pre-listing spend: $2,800, with similar variance by property profile. Top categories:

• Junk removal and decluttering (62% of sellers). Pre-listing cleanouts often involve removing accumulated possessions to make rooms feel larger.
• Cleaning (58%). Deep cleans before professional photos.
• Painting (44%). Touch-ups and refreshes, occasionally full repaints in neutral colors.
• Landscaping (43%). Curb appeal investment.
• Staging (29%). Higher in luxury markets.
• Photography (24%). Beyond what the listing agent provides, often for high-end homes.
• Handyman (38%). Small repairs from inspections or staging consultants.

The pre-listing window is shorter than the post-closing window but the spend is concentrated and the agent’s recommendation carries even more weight because the seller is explicitly trying to maximize their sale price.

This is why ClosingPack supports both sides of the transaction. The same vendor pack can serve both buyers (“here are my preferred vendors for your new home”) and sellers (“here are my preferred vendors to help you list”).

Closing thought

The home services market is enormous (about $500 billion in the US annually) but it’s also extraordinarily fragmented. There are 4 million small home service businesses competing for a customer base that mostly finds them through directories, recommendations, and sometimes ads. Of those acquisition channels, recommendations from a trusted real estate agent convert at the highest rate and produce the most loyal customers.

This has been true for a long time. What’s new is that the infrastructure to formalize the agent’s role in this market is finally being built. The window of post-closing spending was always here. It was always being shaped by agent recommendations. Now it’s becoming something the agent can also participate in economically.

If you’re a vendor, get on the right packs. If you’re an agent, recognize that the value you’re already creating has a market price. If you’re a homeowner reading this, ask your agent for their vendor recommendations and ask them to be honest about any compensation arrangements. That’s the version of this that works for everyone.