After a somewhat down market in both 2023 and 2024, a new report is predicting that the home remodeling industry is poised for growth, even if on the mild side, this coming year.
As published by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, remodeling work and projects are expected to increase by 1.2% for the duration of 2025.
In a statement, Carlos Martin, director of the Remodeling Futures Program at the Harvard Center, pointed to a “solid labor market, rising home values, and continued improvement in existing home sales” as the primary catalysts for the expected increase in remodeling work.
Martin also said that “upward trending retail sales of building materials and steady permitting for remodeling” are additional evidence of a coming upward trend line.
Home remodeling figures saw a dramatic surge upward during the months of the Covid 19 pandemic. Those figures climbed from a 15.5% increase in early 2022 to a high during the fourth quarter of 2022, when business was up by 26.6%.
That late 2022 surge was followed by a lengthy decline between early 2023 and the spring of last year, when the figures went from 20% plus to minus 0.5%.
Starting last summer, the industry experienced a marginal quarterly growth rate of minus 1.4% to the current plus side 0.4%.
The Harvard figures are measured in an index called Leading Indicator of Remodeling Activity, which was initially developed in 2007 and is designed to provide a short-term outlook of national home improvement and repair spending in owner-occupied homes.
January 27, 2025
By Garry Boulard
Photo courtesy of Pixabay
