Most Home Repairs From 2017's Natural Disasters Will Be Completed by 2019-2020

Most of the spending from 2017 losses won’t occur until 2019 or 2020, with a significant increase in spending on home renovations continuing through the next decade.

According to CoreLogic and Moody's Analytics' data, disaster-related damages from Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria cost about $150 billion combined, not including damages from wildfires, droughts, and winter storms. The latest analysis from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies suggests that an increase of $10 billion in total disaster losses since 2014 is associated with about $300 million in additional annual spending on disaster-related home repairs.

In a recent Joint Center blog on that study’s implications, our colleague Jonathan Spader (who worked on the initial HUD study) reported that only 70 percent of hurricane-damaged properties in Louisiana and Mississippi had been rebuilt by early 2010, five years after the storms.

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