Home Improvement Consumer Project Planning: Q3 2021 Update

Each quar­ter since 2012, the Home Improve­ment Research Insti­tute has sur­veyed approx­i­mate­ly 3,000 home­own­ers for its Home Improve­ment Project Intent Track­ing Sur­vey. The sur­vey asks home­own­ers which of 32 dif­fer­ent home improve­ment project areas (if any) they are plan­ning in the next three months. It also explores to what extent they agree with state­ments about their home and home improve­ment. The goal of these sur­veys is to bet­ter under­stand con­sumer project sentiment.

The results from the third quar­ter of 2021 are in. Here are a few key findings:

1. Project plan­ning remained high in Q3.

Through the sum­mer months, near­ly 74% of home­own­ers planned on work­ing on their homes. Down slight­ly from the apex of project plan­ning that occurs every Q2, Q3 2021 is 4% high­er than one year ago. Like­ly many exter­nal fac­tors play a role in the high num­ber of home­own­ers work­ing on their homes:

• Ris­ing home prices
• Increased sav­ings
• Increased dis­pos­able income
• COVID-19 restric­tions keep­ing con­sumers at home

2. Today’s boom­ing hous­ing mar­ket could be influ­enc­ing activity.

On one hand, ris­ing home prices have more peo­ple look­ing at sell­ing their homes, which typ­i­cal­ly involves some remod­el work. On the oth­er, the boom in hous­ing has like­ly left many no longer able to pur­chase a dif­fer­ent home, as demand out­paces sup­ply. Instead, they are stay­ing put and remod­el­ing their cur­rent home.

3. Project activ­i­ty cor­re­lates with age.

As home­own­ers grow old­er, project activ­i­ty tends to drop off. Own­ers in their 30s gen­er­al­ly ren­o­vate more, like­ly due to grow­ing house­holds. As retire­ment age approach­es, projects drop off. Much of the work has like­ly been done by this point.

4. Mar­riage sta­tus plays a role as well.

It may come as no sur­prise that those who are mar­ried are plan­ning more projects. An aver­age mar­ried cou­ple is like­ly to have dual incomes and a larg­er fam­i­ly, neces­si­tat­ing more accommodation.

5. DIY con­fi­dence has a large impact on project planning.

Most sur­vey respon­dents believe they have at least some lev­el of DIY con­fi­dence, with only 15% say­ing they don’t do any type of DIY work. While those who claim to be heavy DIY­ers make up only 12% of home­own­ers, they account for a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of project plans reported.

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