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For years, "aging in place" has been shorthand for grab bars and walk-in showers. The bathroom got all the attention. But look at who is actually paying for home improvements now, and where their stated intentions point, and a different question surfaces: If one of the largest groups of renovators plans to stay in their homes for decades, why would they stop renovating at the back door?
75% of Adults 50 and Older Want to Stay in Their Current Home
Start with the demand signal. AARP's 2024 Home and Community Preferences Survey found that 75% of Americans 50 and older want to stay in their current home for as long as possible, and 73% want to stay in their current community. The desire to stay put runs even stronger among adults 65 and older.
That's the intention. The spending shows they're acting on it.
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Homeowners 65+ Now Account for 27% of Total Improvement Outlays
Here's where the spending tells the story. According to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, owners aged 65 and over contributed 27% of total home improvement spending in 2023, up from 14% two decades earlier. Their share nearly doubled while the rest of the market shuffled around them.
Two decades ago, older owners were a modest slice of remodeling dollars. Now they are one of the largest, and the trend line points in a single direction.
What are they spending it on? Increasingly, on staying. The National Association of Home Builders reports that 73% of remodelers say requests for aging-in-place features have increased significantly or somewhat over the past five years.
Record Home Equity Is Funding the Shift
Intention and a growing share of spending still need money behind them. There's a lot of it. Housing wealth among homeowners aged 62 and older reached a record $14.66 trillion in the third quarter of 2025, up 1.9% from the prior quarter, according to the NRMLA/RiskSpan Reverse Mortgage Market Index. That surpassed the previous record of $14.39 trillion set just one quarter earlier.
So the picture fills in. Older owners want to stay, they are spending a record share of remodeling dollars, and they hold record home equity to fund it. Where that money goes next is the open question.
Low-Maintenance Outdoor Living Is the Part the Trend Hasn't Reached
The bathroom is mostly solved. Grab bars, curbless showers, and wider doorways are mainstream now, not specialty work. Now a majority of homeowners are looking to refurbish their backyard.Â
Outdoor living built for one decade isn't built the same as outdoor living meant for three. A homeowner planning to stay into their 80s shops differently than a 40-year-old planning to sell in five years. Fabric awnings fade and need replacing. Wood structures want staining, sealing, and the occasional rebuild, the upkeep older owners are trying to design out of their lives.
That math favors permanence. A structure like The Luxury Pergola's aluminum pergola reflects a build-it-once approach: a low-maintenance, step-free outdoor room that holds up year after year without the seasonal labor wood and fabric demand. For someone who expects to be using that patio 20 years from now, durability stops being a nice-to-have and starts being the deciding factor.
Aging in Place Is Shifting From Safety Fix to Lifestyle Spend
The shift here is bigger than any single renovation. The older version of aging in place was defensive, a response to a fall or the fear of one. The version the data describes reads as proactive and increasingly about quality of life rather than safety alone.
When one of the largest, best-funded groups of renovators decides to stay put for good, the definition of "the home" widens to include everything they want to keep using. That now reaches past the back door. The grab-bar era treated aging in place as a problem to manage. The numbers suggest the next era treats it as something to invest in, and the backyard is where that investment is heading.
