Hardware Retailing The Industry's Source for Insights and Information
Click the picture to download a PDF of this story.
By Kate Klein, kklein@nrha.org
Fewer homeowners are planning projects to redo, improve, repair or maintain their houses early in 2019 compared to the year prior, according to fourth-quarter research from the nonprofit Home Improvement Research Institute (HIRI).
About 65 percent of homeowners have one or more projects they hope to accomplish in the next three months, for a year-over-year decrease of 6 percent in projects planned, the research shows.
“After roughly a year of increased planning, this drop is ultimately not surprising given the strong levels throughout the rest of the year,” HIRI reports in its Project Sentiment Tracking Study. Because numerous home projects are not necessary to do annually, the overall number of projects homeowners plan “can be very cyclical,” the study says.
Younger homeowners are the most likely to have projects in the works, with 75.6 percent of older millennials (in the study’s 30-39 age group) and 67.5 percent of younger millennials and older members of Generation Z (in the study’s 18-29 group) planning at least one home project.
In general, more than half of homeowners who participated in the research are opting for DIY projects, though the percentage of people who instead want to hire professionals varied by project type.
For example, more than 80 percent of the research participants who are planning lawn, garden and landscaping projects are doing their own work. However, of the people planning to do more ambitious projects related to alternative energy, such as installing solar panels, only about 30 percent intend to do the work themselves.
