---
title: "Home Improvement Consumer Project Planning: Q3 2021 Update"
description: Project planning remained high in Q3 2021.  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.
---

[Blog | HIRI ](https://www.hiri.org/blog)

# [Home Improvement Consumer Project Planning: Q3 2021 Update](https://www.hiri.org/blog/home-improvement-consumer-project-planning-q3-2021-update)

 Written by [HIRI](https://www.hiri.org/blog/author/admin) | Sep 21, 2021 4:30:00 AM

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

HIRI Con­sumer Project Plan­ning High Q3 2021

**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.

Ready for deep­er insights into con­sumer project plan­ning trends? Log in to your mem­ber account to get the lat­est research, or [join HIRI today](https://www.hiri.org/about).

[View full post](https://www.hiri.org/blog/home-improvement-consumer-project-planning-q3-2021-update)

```json
{
  "@context" : "http://schema.org",
  "@type" : "BlogPosting",
  "author" : {
    "@type" : "Person",
    "name" : "HIRI"
  },
  "dateModified" : "2025-09-11T14:23:48.766Z",
  "datePublished" : "2021-09-21T04:30:00Z",
  "headline" : "Home Improvement Consumer Project Planning: Q3 2021 Update",
  "image" : {
    "@type" : "ImageObject",
    "height" : 3173,
    "url" : "https://7162268.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/7162268/Blog%20Images/Home%20Improvement%20Project%20Activity%20Tracker%204%20Things%20We%20Learned/HI-Project-Activity-Tracker-Q1-2022-Hero-min.jpg",
    "width" : 6103
  },
  "mainEntityOfPage" : "https://www.hiri.org/blog/home-improvement-consumer-project-planning-q3-2021-update",
  "publisher" : {
    "@type" : "Organization",
    "logo" : {
      "@type" : "ImageObject",
      "height" : 60,
      "url" : "/hs/hsstatic/content_shared_assets/static-1.4092/img/default-amp-logo.png",
      "width" : 60
    },
    "name" : "Blog | HIRI"
  }
}
```