About What It Costs Today
Whatitcoststoday.com exists for one moment in every homeowner's life: the contractor says a number, and you have no idea whether that number is normal. We publish plain-English cost guides for the repairs and replacements US homeowners actually search for — water heaters, roofs, HVAC, drywall, mini-splits — so you walk into that conversation with a range and a spine.
Who we are
We're a small independent editorial team — a home-obsessed writer with years of renovation scar tissue, a former project coordinator who has read thousands of contractor invoices, and DIY-forever tinkerers who pressure-test every "you can do this yourself" claim before we print it. (Named author bios and photo go here at launch — we're not going to invent a fake expert with a fake trade license.)
How we estimate costs (methodology)
Transparency beats false precision, so here's exactly how our numbers are built — and what they're not:
- Sources: our ranges are compiled from commonly published national averages (industry cost sites, builder/association-published bands, and widely reported homeowner figures) and from what homeowners commonly report paying. We write from general industry knowledge; we do not scrape private quote databases, and we never invent a study to sound authoritative.
- Shape of the numbers: everything is presented as a wide national band (low / typical / high). The low end is a simple job in a cheap market; the high end is premium materials, bad access, and permit-heavy jurisdictions. Anything narrower than "between X and Y" would imply precision we don't have.
- Refresh cadence: ranges are reviewed and updated annually — every guide carries a "last updated" date, and our estimator's underlying numbers live in one editable data file precisely so we can update them in one sitting (see the estimator).
- What we never do: no fake "studies", no fabricated homeowner counts, no partnership or endorsement claims we don't have. Our "Find local pros" blocks are labeled placeholders until real partnerships exist.
How we make money (and why it doesn't bend the numbers)
The site is monetized with display advertising (Google AdSense once approved) and, in future, contractor-referral affiliates. Advertisers cannot buy prices on this site: ranges are set by the methodology above, and a range never moves because an ad network pays more in that category. Affiliate links, when they exist, will be labeled and never change a range.
Talk to us
Spot a number that's wrong for your market? We want the boring truth from your zip code. Email hello@whatitcoststoday.com or use the contact page — corrections shape next year's update.