Brad Hunter

May 24, 2017 The latest monthly data on new home sales showed a bit of a pullback, but the overall trend continues to be solidly positive.  The spring selling season is going extremely well for most builders, and pricing power for them is proving to still be strong so far, even in the face of…

May 18, 2017 The home improvement industry is growing almost twice as fast as the rest of consumer retail.  Homeowners are increasingly willing to open their wallets when it comes to investing in their homes. The latest data point adds further evidence of this trend:  sales at Home Depot stores in the quarter were $23.9…

May 16, 2017 New Lot Development is Not Keeping Up With Demand Builder confidence indicators show that home builders are extremely confident. That said, the pace of new construction fell in April (-2.6% versus March, and essentially flat versus a year ago).  We see the overall pace of new home construction as still rising at a…

May 3, 2017 (Percentage of “location within home” for Aging-in-Place Modifications) A key factor driving the current surge in home improvement relates to the changing needs of the baby boom generation.  Age and mobility-related modifications are already a $13 billion sector of the economy, and growing rapidly.  More importantly, this surge will incorporate a broader…

April 26, 2017 In our new HomeAdvisor report, we revealed the findings of our latest survey of homeowners.  This random sample of 500 homeowners reported that they have increased their expenditure on home improvement/repairs/maintenance by 57% in the past twelve months.  At $5,157 during the last twelve months, this is also a higher level of…

April 11, 2017We at HomeAdvisor have just launched a new quarterly index of sentiment among home improvement contractors.  In collaboration with The Farnsworth Group, we surveyed 1,744 companies, asking their leadership about their current and expected future business prospects.  For more comprehensive results, methodology, and survey dates, explore the detailed data, and watch for ongoing quarterly…

March 23, 2017 Homeowners in the U.S. have become wealthier just by being homeowners.  According to the Federal Reserve’s household flow of funds data, the average homeowner went from $85,000 in home equity in the year 2011 to $167,000 in 2015.  As of today, in early 2017, the average homeowners equity is more than DOUBLE…

March 16, 2017 New data from the Commerce Department shows that the market for new single-family homes continued to strengthen as apartment-building construction weakened.  Single-family construction rose 6.5% in February from the previous month, while multifamily construction fell 3.7%.  As we had been predicting, multifamily construction has started to soften, following an extremely strong multi-year…

March 15, 2017 Home builders are feeling more confident than they have any time since the (2005) peak of the housing market.  Builder confidence in the market for newly-built single-family homes jumped six points to a level of 71 on the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI). This is the highest…

February 28, 2017 I just read the new report called “Improving America’s Housing: Demographic Change and the Remodeling Outlook” The Harvard Joint Center, as always, did a fantastic job summarizing the key trends and issues. Here are some of my takeaways and thoughts. Not One, but Two 900-Pound Gorillas (The Boomer and Millennial Generations) The…

February 21, 2017 With more homeowners feeling flush from a sustained rise in their property value, home improvement spending is on the rise, and The Home Depot has once again nailed down its position as the leader in the home improvement retail business, $22.2 billion in sales in the fourth quarter, beating analysts’ predictions averaging…

February 1, 2017 Credit: KBIS Record attendance at the Kitchen and Bath Industry Show (KBIS) in January illustrates the growth in this sector of the home improvement industry.  I heard a lot of insightful discussions about the industry at KBIS, which inspired me to jot down some valuable nuggets and merge them with my own…

     January 20, 2017 Just back from KBIS (the Kitchen and Bath show in Orlando), and I was struck by how overwhelmingly positive and optimistic the mood was. I met three business owners who have businesses that are unable to keep up with all the requests they are getting for their home improvement services…

January 19, 2017 (Photo from Joint Center of Housing Studies) One of the indicators I like to watch is the Leading Indicator of Remodeling Activity (LIRA), put out by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.  The latest update is out now, and it incorporates new data from the Census Bureau (the American Housing Survey). …

January 3, 2017 The election of a new president can have both positive and negative effects on the economy — and on the home improvement industry in particular. There is a lot of uncertainty about what lies ahead no matter your ideology. Here’s a look at some possible scenarios. On the positive side, tax cuts…

December 13, 2016 Shift in Home Office Trends Home offices became increasingly popular during the 1990s and 2000s, but as of the last few years, some renovation pros are seeing a decline in the demand for home improvement services related to working from home. More and more people are working from home, so why the…

December 12, 2016 Boom in Real Estate Revenue The economy is growing at a relatively modest pace, but new data from the Census Bureau show that revenue in real estate and rental and leasing is growing faster than the other industries that the agency tracks. Total revenue for the third quarter of 2016, in a…

The 2017 housing outlook is one of diverging trends. HomeAdvisor’s forecast calls for single-family housing to rise at a rate similar to the 2016 rate, but for multifamily construction (apartments and condos) to fall, as the recent apartment boom finally winds down. The single-family home increase is because of job growth and rising household formations,…

November 29, 2016 By: Brad Hunter, HomeAdvisor’s Chief Economist As mortgage rates increase over the next few years, home improvement activity is likely to increase with them. This may seem counter intuitive, but you can expect two somewhat opposing effects: one highly positive and one slightly negative. Negative Effect The negative effect will stem from…

November 23, 2016 Sales of new single-family houses in October 2016 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 563,000, according to estimates released jointly today by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. This is 1.9% below the revised September rate of 574,000. That said, the number is 17.8%…

November 17, 2016 The new data on housing starts just came out, showing a 25.5% increase in the month of October (seasonally-adjusted percent increase from September, which was revised upward). Although most of the improvement was due to a 74.5% increase in multifamily construction, single-family starts increased nicely as well (up 10.7%). I hasten to…

November 15, 2016 Retail sales, across all types of stores, have shown significant improvement, but Home Depot continues to run rings around many other types of retail. Home Depot just completed their conference call with industry analysts, and they described their business results for their fiscal third quarter. I jotted down some of the key…

November 11, 2016 Recent comments from home products manufacturers on their quarterly earnings calls supports our thesis that people are finally getting around to taking on long-deferred home improvements.  Homeowners are now more readily upgrading to higher-quality products.  I was reading some research from UBS’ excellent industry analyst Sue Maklari, and she cited some comments from…

Want in on a multi-billion-dollar business opportunity? Specialize in thriving-in-place projects. Roughly 108 million U.S. citizens have surpassed age 50—and the majority of them wish to live comfortably and independently in their homes for as long as possible. The reality is that most of these people will have to modify their existing homes to make…

November 2, 2016 The Opportunity I have commented on the “billion-dollar” opportunity for home improvement aimed at what we call “Thriving in Place.” Now I have a number to attach to it. The Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University has studied the industry thoroughly and found that the market for this kind of…

October 4, 2016 On homeowners’ minds: taming those overgrown plants, bugs, and pesky critters!  In the third quarter of 2016, the nation’s homeowners increased their orders for services related to pest control, lawn care, and landscaping faster than they did for any other categories of home services. New data from HomeAdvisor, which compare the third…

Remodeling is on the rise, and consumers are now tackling larger kitchen and bathroom renovations than in previous years.  Whole-room remodels are the kinds of discretionary (as opposed to immediately-necessary) projects that typically get put off when the economy is soft.  Now that the lingering effects of the recession have mostly faded, homeowners are feeling…

Earlier this week, I attended the “Remodeling Futures Conference” held at the Harvard Faculty Club, and put on by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.  There was a record turnout, including members of the remodeling industry, academia, industry associations, and government (Census Bureau).   There was a focus on home automation, covering smart-home trends,…

June 17, 2016 Baby boomers account for nearly half of all spending on home improvement projects nationwide and they when they undertake a project they invest “for keeps.” More than 60% of them plan to stay in their home as they age, so with that expectation in mind, they tend to pay a little more…

HomeAdvisor Chief Economist Brad Hunter reports consumers are becoming more cautious with their money, which has positive implications for home improvement spending. Last week Macy’s, Nordstrom and Kohl’s all reported disappointing first quarters and experienced big stock price declines. Folks are shopping at the discount chains (or online) instead of at Macy’s, and the key theme is that they are trying to make their dollars go farther.

May 21, 2016 It’s been a busy day for remodeling trends and stats, and the news is decidedly positive. The National Association of Homebuilders (NAHB) released their RMI (Remodelers Index) and the Harvard Joint Center released their LIRA (Leading Indicator for Remodeling). They both showed that more remodelers are seeing increases than decreases. The forward-looking…

I just got back from the Pacific Coast Builders Conference (PCBC) in San Francisco, and I heard some positive sentiment (Brexit shock notwithstanding) from builder executives. The level of traffic through showrooms and the quality of traffic have improved, supporting the pace of sales so far this selling season. Builders Focus on First-Time Buyers Builders…

The recent poor performance of labor markets adds to concerns that consumers are pulling in their horns. Retail sales at major department store chains have been dismal.  Despite this, home-improvement spending has held up well. It will be important to watch measures of consumer confidence to see if the public psyche weakens along with the…

February 11, 2016 The number of home improvement projects underway at any given time depends heavily on what I call “churn,” or the rate of turnover as it relates to homes.  The rate of churn across America has rebounded since the Great Recession — and with an increase in churn has come an increase in…

January 3, 2017 2017’s prospective home improvement trends are starting to come into better focus — and all signs point to a surge in first-time home buyers and home improvement spending.  In fact, HomeAdvisor’s 2017 forecast calls for a continued dwindling of “distress” and a continued increase in the number of “normal” home sales. And…