Fence Repair Cost by Damage Type

Homeowners describe fence trouble in terms of panels — leaning, sagging, gaps opening. Underneath, it is nearly always the posts. Wood posts rot at ground level, where moisture, soil, and oxygen meet. Metal posts corrode at the same line. Concrete footings crack or heave with frost.

This matters for what you spend, because a panel repair on a failing post is money you lose. Before authorising any repair, push firmly on the posts either side of the damage and probe the base with a screwdriver. If it sinks into soft wood, the post is the real job.

It also explains the price spread on post resets. Extracting an old concrete footing is genuinely heavy work — that's the difference between the $150 and the $500 end.

“Fixing a post” describes three different jobs at three different prices, and quotes rarely say which one you are being sold.

Two things move the price more than the material does. The old footing — a concrete-set post has to be dug out or broken up, and that is the difference between the bottom and the top of every range above. And the call-out: a minimum charge of $150–$300 is common, so the first post carries most of the cost and each additional one on the same visit is far cheaper. If you have three marginal posts, do them together rather than one a year.

On swapping wood for steel: the labour is identical and the post outlives the panels it carries, so the upgrade is close to free in the long run — the reason to hesitate is appearance, since a metal post in a timber run shows unless it's sleeved or hidden at a corner. Depth is what actually decides post life→ — a replacement set to the same shallow depth as the one that failed will fail the same way.

A dropped gate is the most common fence complaint there is, and the most commonly mis-fixed — because the cheap remedy on the shelf only addresses one of the three causes. Diagnose before you buy anything.

Is it the post?

Close the gate and look at the gap along the latch side. If the gap is wider at the top than the bottom, the hinge post is leaning — the gate is fine and the post is the job. This is the most common cause and the most expensive one, at $250–$800, because a gate post carries a cantilevered load and needs a bigger, deeper footing than the line posts either side of it. No amount of hardware fixes it.

Is it the frame?

If the post is plumb but the gate itself has gone from a rectangle to a parallelogram, the frame has racked. This is the one a $15 anti-sag kit genuinely fixes, and the direction matters more than the brand:

• A tension cable and turnbuckle runs from the top of the hinge side down to the bottom of the latch side, and pulls the latch corner up.
• A rigid timber brace runs the opposite way — bottom of the hinge side up to the top of the latch side — and pushes it up.

Fitted the wrong way round, a cable pulls the gate further out of square, which is why so many of these kits get returned as ineffective.

Is it the hardware?

Hinges pulling out of the post, or hinges simply too light for the leaf. A heavy gate on three-inch screws will always lose. Re-hanging with through-bolts and correctly rated hinges is $150–$400 and is the cheapest of the three real fixes.

Order of diagnosis, cheapest first: check the post is plumb, then check the gate is square, then look at the hinges. Buying hardware before doing that is the most common wasted purchase in fence repair. If it's an automatic driveway gate→, treat sag as urgent — an operator forcing a dropping gate damages itself.

Reasonable to DIY: replacing pickets or boards, re-securing a loose rail, tightening gate hardware, replacing chain link fabric ties. Basic tools, low downside.

Harder than it looks: resetting a post. Removing the old footing is the work, and setting the new post plumb, at the right depth, and aligned with the existing run is where amateur repairs visibly fail.

Hire it out: gate realignment (usually a post problem, not a hinge problem), any repair involving several posts, and storm damage where structural soundness is uncertain.

Call 811 before digging — free, generally required, and post holes reach utility depth.

Worth setting expectations before you spend: a repair rarely disappears. The existing fence has weathered and the new material hasn't, so new boards read lighter, and stain lands differently on new wood than on old. Vinyl and painted metal fade over years, so replacement panels can look subtly newer even in matching colours, and older profiles are sometimes discontinued entirely.

Two practical workarounds: re-stain or repaint the whole run after repairing, or — for a highly visible spot — take the matching panel from a hidden elevation and put the new one where nobody looks.

Three signals that repair has stopped being the better value:

• Several posts are soft or moving. The fence is ending; panels won't change that.
• Damage spans more than about a third of the run. Section-by-section repair costs approach replacement without resetting the clock.
• You've repaired something every season. Add up three years of bills and compare them with a replacement.

See replacement cost→ — and note that replacement is also the cheapest moment to change material or height, since tear-out and post-setting dominate the labour either way.

• Whether posts are being reset or only panels replaced — and why
• Whether old footings are being removed or new holes dug alongside
• How they'll handle colour matching
• Minimum call-out charge, which can dominate a small repair
• Whether it's worth bundling several small repairs into one visit

Have a quote? Check it against typical ranges→ and vet the contractor→ — small jobs attract door-knockers after storms.