Homeowners still interested in adding value to their homes from remodeling

by Fred Miller

A new study on how homeowners approach a home improvement project found something that wasn’t expected. After the pounding home prices took during the Great Recession, it was anticipated that homeowners would be less likely to be focused on adding value to their homes when doing remodeling.

It turns out that hypothesis was wrong. The rating for importance of information on the ‘impact on my home’s value’ actually went up marginally from before the recession to today. It appears that once trained to think about the impact on their home’s value, U.S. homeowners have made that a part of their long-term thinking.Growing Learning Areas-Changing Approaches

While adding value held its own, there was statistically significant growth in the importance of getting ideas on styles/appearance. While it is hard to pinpoint the driver of this interest, the availability of ideas on the Internet and via television programming, certainly help fill this growing need. As it happens, our newly crowned largest generation, the Millennials, has the strongest interest in style/appearance.

For businesses whose products or services relate to style and appearance, this should be a call to action to meet the strong needs of Millennials in this area.

In recent years, U.S. homeowners have gone through a lot with the Great Recession and the continual growth of technology in every aspect of their lives. What has all of this done to change how homeowners approach their home improvement projects?  Consumer Specialists was in a unique position to gain insight because it had done a major study in 2006, prior to the financial crisis. By contrasting the results of a new study to the original one, a lot has been learned.

The full results of the study are in a report titled, Changing Approaches To Home Improvement: The Profound Impacts of The Housing Bubble and Technology on U.S. Homeowners.  This survey covers a range of other subjects including sources that are used for research, methods for finding a contractor and perceptions of leading national home improvement service companies. For more information about the report, contact ConsumerSp@aol.com.

How contractor found Changing Approaches


About the author: For the past 18 years, Fred Miller has been President of Consumer Specialists and a leading consultant in the $300 billion home improvement market. From 1998 through the first quarter of 2015, his consulting has included serving as Managing Director of the Home Improvement Research Institute (HIRI).  

| 5/31/2016 12:00:00 AM | 0 comments
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