Cheapest States for Home Renovation Aren’t Missouri or Illinois

With home prices still generally on the rise, many are choosing to renovate their current abodes instead of buying a new one. There's bad news for those in Missouri and Illinois as neither state is anywhere to be found among the cheapest states to improve your home in America.

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I saw Livability share a recent breakdown of cheapest states for home improvement and Missouri and Illinois weren't on it, but it only showed the top 5. So, I chased down the original study done by Compare the Market where they included the top 25. Spoiler Alert: You won't find Missouri or Illinois there either. Bummer.

Here's the infographic they created to show the top 25 cheapest states for home renovation.

So how did they come to the conclusion that Missouri and Illinois are NOT cheap states to do home improvement?

According to Livability, there were 5 factors they included in their metrics including median home value, age, loan value, wage for laborers and how many construction workers there are available in each state. Interesting.

There's no specific word on why Missouri and Illinois got dinged for not being great home improvement places because they were nowhere to be found on the list. Honestly, I thought it would be the opposite. My uncle was a contractor and was constantly busy in the Mark Twain Lake area and Hannibal.

If I had to guess, this is another one of those internet ranking things where we're probably being set back because of some "per capita" thing, but that's just me guessing.