Hardware Retailing The Industry's Source for Insights and Information
The Home Improvement Research Institute’s (HIRI) 2026 Home Improvement Insights Summit hosted home improvement leaders and professionals to glean insights from the most pressing industry data in Minneapolis from Sept. 29-30, 2026. The Summit focused its sessions on five key themes impacting the market: macroeconomics, the customer journey, data and market research, home improvement project spending and the channel.
The first session opened with Danushka Nanayakkara-Skillington, assistant vice president for forecasting and analysis at NAHB, discussing how inflation and other economic factors are impacting homebuilding and homebuying, noting the median age of a first-time homebuyer is now 40, up from 29 in 1981.
HIRI’s Dave King, along with Ralph McLaughlin, Ph.D., chief economist at OpenBrand and Michael Zdinak, Ph.D., director at S&P Global, spoke about how home affordability, low mortgage rates and income are impacting today’s buyers.
Multiple sessions featured insights about the customer purchase journey, emphasizing both pro’s and AI’s role in customer recommendations and preferences. 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, revealing pro confidence in getting business in the next six months an 8.2 out of 10 on the index.
Liza Hausman, senior vice president of marketing at Houzz, discussed Houzz’s 2026 research, revealing that 22% of homeowners use AI for renovation and that 25% of renovation dollars sit in households that use AI to help.
The Summit welcomed Kevin O’Connor, host of This Old House, to discuss how the brand stays relevant in the home improvement market through earning trust by educating first, never being wrong and never coming across as transactional.
King emphasized the importance of growth in the industry going into 2027, citing 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. He left attendees with one bottom line for manufacturers: take uncertainty out of the customer’s decision in the coming quarter.
Read the full Summit recap here.
