HIRI's 2026 Home Improvement Insights Summit brought manufacturers, retailers, and research leaders to Minneapolis on September 29 and 30, 2026. Session after session returned to the point that customers delay and downsize when they are unsure, and the market will not hand manufacturers growth they do not win. This recap groups the sessions into five themes and explains what each means for your 2027 plan.
This article covers the main sessions from both days of the 2026 Summit, from the macro and housing outlook to HIRI's Q2 2026 research, the pro channel, stores, AI, and financing, and connects each to the decisions manufacturers face in planning 2027.
The Summit opened with the economic backdrop, a resilient but slowing economy in which affordability and uncertainty set the pace for home improvement.
Danushka Nanayakkara-Skillington, Assistant Vice President for Forecasting and Analysis at NAHB, opened Day 1 with a clear read of the economy. Inflation has eased but remains above the Federal Reserve's target, and growth is slowing. The Federal Reserve raised its benchmark rate on September 16, 2026, its first increase in more than three years. NAHB's outlook has inflation-adjusted remodeling spending growing 6% in 2025, holding flat in 2026, and growing 2% in each of 2027 and 2028.
NAHB showed the mortgage lock-in effect easing but still persisting, and National Association of Realtors data put the median age of a first-time buyer at 40 in 2025, up from 29 in 1981. For manufacturers, a flat remodeling year and a stalled housing market mean fewer move-related projects, so owners who stay put carry more of the demand.
Dave King, HIRI's Executive Director, joined Ralph McLaughlin, Ph.D., Chief Economist at OpenBrand, and Michael Zdinak, Ph.D., Director at S&P Global, for a panel on the headwinds and tailwinds ahead. Three themes ran through the discussion:
1. The first was that affordability and uncertainty, more than demand, are holding back a housing recovery, which is why clarity on rates and rules matters for restarting activity.
2. The second was that homeowners locked into low-rate mortgages will take years to unwind, so owners stay put and spread renovations over time.
3. The third was that income drives spending, and King noted that HIRI's demand modeling points to real disposable income as the best indicator of home improvement spending.
For manufacturers, the common thread is steadier, smaller projects and not a rate-driven rebound.
Sessions on pros, homeowners, AI, and media showed a purchase path that has become less linear, with pros, AI, and trusted content all shaping what homeowners choose.
Grant Farnsworth, President of The Farnsworth Group, presented findings from HIRI and The Farnsworth Group's Q2 2026 Quarterly Contractor Business Sentiment Tracker alongside the Farnsworth Contractor Index for Q3 2026. The index put pro confidence in getting business over the next six months at 8.2 out of 10, a positive reading even after a 0.3-point decline from Q3 2025. Among pros, 67% expect revenue to grow over the next 12 months, including majorities of both small firms (62%) and large firms (75%).
In the joint Q2 2026 tracker, 47% of contractors said their project mix has shifted toward repair and replacement over the past year, and 73% said customers at least sometimes ask them to scale back a quoted project. Early findings from The Farnsworth Group and Venveo's 2027 Building Products Customer Guide, which will be released publicly in Q1 2027, show that 67% of remodelers and general contractors ranked quick repair or replacement of faulty products as the most important support from manufacturers.
Farnsworth advised winning loyalty with products for small repair jobs that lead to larger projects. For manufacturers, that makes repair and replace work the place to earn pro loyalty, and fast warranty response gives pros a reason to stay loyal.
Stephen Giles, HIRI's Senior Research Director, presented findings from HIRI's Q2 2026 Homeowner Project Activity Tracker, which show homeowners shifting from pure DIY toward hybrid work. He named four places where brands can influence a less linear journey, which are:
Product purchase journeys are not always linear either. Based on HIRI's research, in Q2 2026 projects that involved a contractor, 36% of homeowners said the contractor recommended products and they made the final call, 28% said they decided together, and 16% said the contractor chose. In 80% of those projects, the contractor recommended the products, helped choose them, or chose them outright. For manufacturers, that makes the pro a gateway to the homeowner's decision, and product support must work for DIY, hybrid, and contractor-led jobs.
Liza Hausman, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Houzz, presented Houzz's 2026 research. Houzz found that 22% of homeowners use AI for renovation and that 25% of renovation dollars sit in households that use AI to help. Nearly one in 10 renovation dollars sit in households where AI changed what was specified. Hausman called AI an incumbency amplifier and said the real risk for a brand is absence from the shortlist, not reputational damage. For manufacturers, that makes verifiable product information and pro relationships the way onto the shortlist.
Kevin O'Connor, Host of This Old House, opened Day 2 with the brand's formula for staying relevant, which home improvement brands and retailers alike can learn from. O'Connor emphasized earning trust by educating first, never being wrong, and never coming across as transactional. He advised brands to own their content instead of "renting" an audience, and he emphasized specialization, because depth beats breadth when it comes to building trust and loyalty. His rule of thumb is to teach and not sell, and that reach, not longevity, creates relevance. For manufacturers, retailers, and other stakeholders in the home improvement industry, producing content in a variety of mediums remains necessary to gain visibility. Consider whether how-to content that helps homeowners and pros finish a job can accelerate your market visibility.
Two sessions looked at the information behind decisions, from how research teams use synthetic data to what home buyers want to know about a home.
Chris Barnes, President of Escalent, closed Day 1's sessions with a message for anyone who buys or uses research, which is that synthetic data works only when real human data anchors it. He defined synthetic data as artificially generated information that mimics real-world data and is meant to complement real data, not replace it.
Escalent's three pilots showed why the anchor matters. Synthetic sample augmentation lost reliability as surveys grew more complex, a vendor's approach produced about 85 completes from roughly 650 attempts, and conversational personas often landed 10 or more points from actual survey results. Escalent judged personas best suited to translating insights, not generating data, and Barnes noted that when a model answers freely, the buyer cannot see where the answer comes from.
Barnes said synthetic data is worth considering only with solid human data as an anchor, a clear goal, and stakeholders who accept it, and that it changes the job of research instead of replacing it. For manufacturers that buy research, ask vendors where synthetic data sits in the blend and which human data anchors it. Without those answers, you cannot tell how far to trust the result.
Cynthia Adams, CEO and Co-Founder of Pearl, argued that buyers are taking on a set of unknowns, including aging systems, reliability, and future costs, and that they lack the tools to evaluate them. In Pearl's February 2026 survey of 833 recent and active home buyers, 45% did not know what to ask about a home's systems, and 81% would use a performance score to compare homes. Her point for the industry was that closing the home performance gap makes the work pros and brands do count at the next sale.
For manufacturers, the link to repair and replace work is direct. HIRI's Q2 2026 Homeowner Tracker found that repair remained the dominant project driver, so many of the moments when a homeowner chooses a system or product are repairs and replacements. A better-performing option with documented specifications and performance claims gives the homeowner a reason to choose it now and gives the next buyer a reason to value it. Adams advised manufacturers and distributors to equip their channels to document specifications and support performance claims for exactly that reason.
HIRI's research and Synchrony's work showed how household income and cost determine which projects start and how they get paid for.
Dave King opened his closing review with HIRI's Q2 2026 Homeowner Tracker, fielded in June 2026 with 1,193 homeowners, to show how planned spending splits by annual household income. Overall, 27% planned to spend more on home improvement over the next 12 months and 30% planned to spend less, the first negative net reading since tracking began in Q1 2024. Subtracting the share planning to spend less from the share planning to spend more gives negative 22 for households earning under $80,000 a year (17% more, 39% less) and positive 30 for households earning $160,000 a year and up (46% more, 16% less).
Cost is the main barrier to starting a home improvement project for households earning under $80,000 a year, as 76% of those who postponed a project cited budget, against 60% at $160,000 and up. Households earning $80,000 to $159,000 tend to split the work between DIY and a pro, with 52% of those who finished a project in the prior 90 days combining the two, against 31% of households earning under $80,000. For households earning $160,000 and up, friction is the main barrier, with 46% of those who have not started a project already holding a quote, against 18% under $80,000.
For manufacturers, there are three primary levers to influence home improvement project activity despite financial headwinds for many consumers:
For the middle group that splits the work, one plan covering the materials homeowners install and the pro they hire fits best. For households earning $160,000 and up, helping contractors turn saved quotes into start dates, with a clear plan for disruption, addresses the friction.
David Smith, Senior Vice President at Synchrony Financial, showed how far homeowners' expectations sit from reality. In Synchrony's 2026 Lifetime of Home Care research, homeowners estimated a lifetime of home maintenance at $70,000 against an actual cost of $339,000, and 48% had not addressed a repair because of cost. Homeowners also underestimated annual costs, estimating $1,000 to $5,000 a year in maintenance while average annual expenses add up to $7,000 or more.
Smith told pros and retailers to offer financing early in the sale and show payment options before the estimate lands, because this can reduce one big source of friction in completing a project. HIRI's own September 2026 financing research shows how much financing matters to project size. Homeowners who finance spend nearly three times more per project than those who do not, $12,500 against $4,250. The two groups report the same median household income, but homeowners who finance have a lower net worth, $225,000 against $450,000, which suggests financing lets them take on the bigger version of a project. Financing also follows how a product is sold and not only how large the project is. Siding buyers spend $17,550 on average and finance 13% of the time, while house wrap buyers spend $15,500 and finance 70% of the time, because house wrap is typically part of a larger, contractor-led job where financing is already part of the conversation.
Manufacturers rarely offer financing directly to homeowners, so the financing message lands with the partners who do. Retailers and suppliers often provide financing programs, larger pros often set up third-party financing partnerships to present alongside their project bids, and lenders sit behind both. For manufacturers, that means asking which financing options your retail and pro partners already offer and making your products easy to include in them, especially for standalone material purchases where financing is rarely part of the conversation.
Two sessions looked at where products reach customers, in stores and through the technology retailers use to serve them.
Mark Ryski, Founder and CEO of HeadCount Corporation, reminded the room that physical stores still carry most sales, 84% of U.S. retail sales in Census Bureau data for Q2 2026. He argued that sales alone are not a reliable success signal, because traffic measures opportunity and conversion measures performance. Two stores can post the same sales with very different conversion. For manufacturers, sell-through alone cannot show whether a weak SKU has a traffic problem or a conversion problem, so ask your retail partners for both numbers.
Rajiv Raghunathan, Vice President of Technology for Store Selling at Lowe's, described how a retailer with more than 1,700 stores and 300,000 associates approaches AI. Lowe's starts with the problem and friction, keeps people at the center, and measures what changes. Its blueprint takeoff tool turns a pro's blueprint into a material list and product codes for associates, which Lowe's estimates can cut turnaround from more than 20 days to about two. Raghunathan said pairing technology with a broken process only digitizes the friction, and that the number of friction points removed is a better measure than the number of AI tools launched. For manufacturers, tools like this depend on clean product data, so accurate specifications and catalog codes help your products make the list.
King then tied the homeowner data to HIRI's Q3 2026 Size of the Home Improvement Products Market Report and Forecast, which has the market growing 2.5% in 2026 in current dollars and shrinking 1.5% after inflation. HIRI's breakdown of the September revisions shows the consumer segment revised down and the professional segment revised up. For manufacturers, a year without volume growth means every gain comes from a decision a competitor would otherwise have won. With growth forecast to return at 1.4% after inflation (3.5% in current dollars) in 2027, that pressure carries into next year's plan.
HIRI's December 2025 Project Decision Study shows where those decisions happen. The average planned project takes 15 months from first idea to completion, with 9.3 months from idea to decision, 2.7 months from decision to start, and 3.0 months from start to completion. That means 12 of the 15 months pass before work starts, while the industry measures and competes on the last three.
HIRI's earlier look at why homeowners postpone instead of cancel projects found that budget uncertainty, not a lack of demand, is the main obstacle for building products brands, so the opportunity is to remove an uncertainty from the decision and not to create demand.
King also noted that AI use is measured in many ways across the industry. The five measures presented at the Summit range from 12% of homeowners naming AI as a research source in HIRI's Q2 2026 tracker to 91% of buyers using or planning to use it in Pearl's February 2026 survey of home buyers, and each is accurate for the group and question it covers. King said HIRI's new research program is built to give the industry a shared way to measure it.
Across the two days, income decided what a customer needed to start, pros and trusted advice decided what got installed, and uncertainty decided when the work began. King's bottom line for manufacturers was to take one uncertainty out of the customer's decision in the coming quarter. In practice, that means answering the doubt most likely to stall a project, such as the cost of starting, how to pay for it, or whether the crew will show up on schedule.
HIRI publishes the U.S. Size of the Home Improvement Products Market Report and Forecast, the Quarterly Home Improvement Project Activity Tracker, and the Quarterly Contractor Business Sentiment Tracker every quarter. As a HIRI member, you have access to the full reports behind the figures in this article, plus one free ticket to the HIRI Summit each year, so you do not miss the other key insights shared by the best and brightest in the home improvement industry.
Dave King will walk through the latest findings in HIRI's free industry and research update webinar on November 18, 2026. King also asked Summit attendees, members and non-members alike, to send the one question their team most needs answered in 2027, and readers can send theirs through the Contact Us link at the top of this page.
The Home Improvement Research Institute held its 2026 Home Improvement Insights Summit on September 29 and 30, 2026 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Sessions covered the macro-economy, housing and remodeling industry economics, homeowner behavior, pro sentiment, channel strategies, adoption of AI in home improvement, and more.
Customers delay and downsize home improvement projects and product purchases when they are uncertain about the economy or the project itself. HIRI's September 2026 U.S. Size of Market forecast has the market shrinking 1.5% in 2026 after inflation, so gains come from winning decisions competitors would otherwise win. Dave King advised manufacturers to take one uncertainty out of the customer's decision, which means answering the doubt that is stalling a project, such as what it will cost, how to pay for it, or whether the crew will show up on schedule.
According to the Home Improvement Research Institute's Q2 2026 Homeowner Project Activity Tracker, households earning under $80,000 a year report net negative planned spending for the next 12 months, while households earning $160,000 a year and up report net positive planned spending.
It depends on who is asked and how. Measures presented at the Summit range from 12% to 91%. The 91% came from Pearl's February 2026 survey of 833 recent and active home buyers, who had used or planned to use AI to research homes. Other measures include 22% of homeowners in Houzz's 2026 research and 40% of homeowners in HIRI's Q2 2026 Homeowner Tracker, according to the Home Improvement Research Institute.