State of the Trades Report — June 2026
Median roofing bid values submitted through Estimate.Pro rose 9.4% month-over-month in June, the steepest single-month move tracked in that trade segment since February 2025. That number is the headline, but it is not the whole story. Beneath it sit diverging labor markets, a concrete materials correction in three Sun Belt metros, and a window/door segment that continues to outpace its own 2025 comp by double digits.
This report draws on bid data across 25 supported trades and 100 metropolitan service areas. The observations below are descriptive, not predictive. Contractors should weight their local conditions accordingly.
Roofing: Material Costs Climb While Labor Softens in Select Markets
The 9.4% rise in median roofing bid values is driven by two inputs moving in opposite directions. Asphalt shingle costs — specifically 30-year architectural product — are up approximately $18–$22 per square in wholesale markets across the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic as of late May. Contractors in Philadelphia and Washington, DC are absorbing the full hit; neither market has normalized since Q1 supply-chain compression.
Labor is a different story. Dallas and Houston both show rooftop labor rates stabilizing around $42–$48 per square for tear-off-and-replace on a standard 24-square residential roof. That is down from a $51 high in March. The differential is partly seasonal — more crews available in early summer — and partly a reaction to permit-pull data in Harris County, where single-family roofing permits dropped 11% in April before recovering modestly.
The practical effect for roofing contractors: material cost increases are outrunning the labor relief. A bid that penciled at 38% gross margin in January may be sitting at 31–33% today on the same scope if the estimator has not updated their material line items.
Estimate.Pro's roofing squares calculator converts ridge-to-eave measurements to squares and applies a waste factor by roof pitch — useful for fast sanity-checks on supplier quotes before the bid is assembled.
Foundations and Concrete: A Regional Correction Underway
Ready-mix concrete pricing in Miami, Dallas, and Houston has pulled back 6–8% from the April peak. The correction follows a period of elevated demand tied to slab-on-grade starts in both residential and light commercial. Suppliers in those metros have excess capacity entering summer, and spot pricing reflects that.
For foundation contractors, the math is straightforward: a 3,200 sq ft slab at 4-inch depth requires roughly 39–40 cubic yards of 4,000 PSI mix. At the April peak in the Miami market, that mix was running $175–$185/CY delivered. June quotes are coming in at $162–$170/CY from the same suppliers. That is a $500–$900 swing in material cost on a single residential pour — enough to affect margin materially on competitively priced work.
Chicago is moving the other direction. Prevailing-wage thresholds for foundation work on projects above $500,000 in Cook County reset July 1. Concrete contractors working in that tier should be pricing the new labor schedule into any bid with a start date after July 15.
The Estimate.Pro cost library allows material prices to be saved per workspace and updated by market. Contractors operating across multiple metros can maintain separate cost sets rather than averaging across regions.
New Additions: Permit Timelines Lengthening in Dense Markets
New addition work — room additions, second-story expansions, garage conversions — continues to show strong bid volume in June, up roughly 14% year-over-year across the platform. The constraint is not demand. It is permit throughput.
In New York City, residential addition permit approval times have stretched to 18–24 weeks in several borough offices, up from a 10–12 week baseline cited in the city's own 2024 building department report. Los Angeles is showing similar extension in the San Fernando Valley submarket, where ADU and addition permits are competing for the same review queue.
The practical consequence: contractors bidding new addition work need to build permit lead time explicitly into project timelines, not treat it as a background assumption. A client who expects a finished addition in October from a June contract signing is working with a flawed schedule if the permit clock starts at zero today.
Scope definition is also more consequential on addition work than on repair or replacement trades. A vague scope creates change-order exposure when structural, mechanical, and energy code requirements crystallize mid-permit. The walkthrough-to-estimate workflow produces a written scope-of-work before pricing is attached, which reduces the gap between what the client understood and what the permit set requires.
Windows and Doors: The Replacement Cycle Is Running Hot
Window and door replacement bids are up 18% year-over-year in June, the strongest sustained growth of any single trade category on the platform. The driver is a cohort of homes built between 1990 and 2005 that are now cycling through their second window replacement. Vinyl unit lifespans in that era averaged 20–25 years; the first installations are simply aging out.
Unit pricing has not moved dramatically — standard double-hung vinyl replacement units in most markets range from $320–$490 installed depending on size and installer — but job size is increasing. The median windows-and-doors bid on the platform in June covered 11 units, up from 8.4 units in June 2025. Contractors are being called for whole-house replacements rather than single-unit repairs.
Energy code compliance is a growing friction point on this work. ENERGY STAR 7.0 requirements for residential windows took effect in January 2026. Several contractors in the Chicago and Philadelphia markets have flagged bids where the client-specified product did not meet the U-factor threshold (0.27 in climate zone 5) required for permit. That is a conversation that needs to happen before the bid is signed, not after the windows are ordered.
Siding: James Hardie Lead Times Extend Again
Fiber cement siding lead times from primary distributors are running 6–10 weeks in most markets as of June, up from 3–5 weeks in Q4 2025. The extension is supply-side: one major manufacturing facility running at reduced capacity through a scheduled retooling. The timeline is expected to normalize by Q3, but contractors bidding siding work today need to account for it in project scheduling.
Vinyl siding is readily available and pricing is flat. The spread between vinyl and fiber cement installed cost has widened to approximately $2.80–$4.10 per sq ft depending on profile and market, which is making the material conversation more active than it typically is mid-season.
Los Angeles contractors are also navigating the Title 24 cool-roof provisions that now apply to siding re-cladding projects that include more than 25% of the building envelope. The provision is not new, but enforcement has tightened following a 2025 compliance audit cycle. Verify whether your permit office is flagging this before submitting drawings.
What Changed This Month: Platform Coverage and Calculator Additions
Three calculators were added to the public toolset in June, bringing the total to 18 free tools: drywall quantity (by room dimensions and door/window deductions), concrete volume (slab, column, and footing modes), and a paint coverage estimator that accounts for surface texture and coat count.
The calculator suite now spans material estimation for roofing, HVAC (Manual J), solar (kWh production), pools, paving, fencing, pressure washing, and the new additions above. All tools are free with no account required.
The /compare matrix was also updated in June to reflect current pricing from 12 benchmarked competitor platforms. One platform in the benchmarked set raised its per-seat pricing by $20/month in May; the matrix reflects the new figure. Contractors evaluating platforms can see the side-by-side without contacting a sales team.
Median bid-drafting time on the platform held at 8 minutes from job-site walkthrough to client-ready PDF. That figure is the platform median across all 25 supported trades; complex commercial scopes take longer, and single-trade residential replacements are often faster.
What We're Watching Next Month
Four items are on the monitoring list for the July edition.
Lumber pricing. Framing lumber futures have moved sharply in the last three weeks. If the move holds through June close, addition and framing contractors will see it in July materials quotes. The foundation-and-framing combination bid is the first place the exposure will show up in platform data.
Permit fee schedules. Several municipalities reset permit fee tables on July 1, including jurisdictions in the Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston metro areas. Fee structures vary widely — a $15,000 addition permit can cost $180 in one jurisdiction and $620 in the next. We track permit fee ranges across the 100 covered metros; updated figures will be in the July report.
HVAC replacement volume. A sustained heat pattern across the Gulf Coast and Southeast typically triggers a surge in unplanned HVAC replacement bids in July. Last year that surge ran 22% above June volume in the Miami and Houston markets. Whether 2026 follows that pattern depends partly on weather and partly on how much deferred equipment replacement remains in the installed base.
Stripe Connect processing volume. Pro+ and Elite tier contractors on the platform process client payments at 0% platform fee via Stripe Connect. June processing volume through Stripe Connect invoicing grew 31% month-over-month, the fastest monthly growth recorded for that feature. July will indicate whether that is a seasonal acceleration or a structural shift in how contractors on the platform are collecting payment.
The July report publishes the first week of August. Trade-specific data cuts are available by filtering the platform's bid history in your own account; the aggregate data above represents anonymized, aggregated figures across all active users.