April 16, 2021
2020 Hindsight: 2021 Builder Practices Reports Now Available
The year 2020 was characterized by price instability, supply disruptions and shortages, and even mandated business closures in some areas. We also saw an unexpected boost in new housing construction that started early in the year and continued. Considering these factors, we anticipated some changes in building materials purchasing patterns; only some of that anticipation played out.
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April 1, 2021
Where Did We Buy? Purchase Location for Home Remodel Projects
Not all building materials purchase outlets did equally well during the pandemic. As the responses from our latest Consumer Practices Survey came in, we were able to examine who did well, and in which product categories. With this rich data, Home Innovation is introducing the “Purchase Location for Home Remodeling Projects” report to provide market insight for retailers and suppliers of building materials.
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February 18, 2021
Boom or Bust: What Products Did “The Year of DIY” Favor?
The biggest trademark of 2020? Change! This was true in nearly everything that affects how we live in our homes and how we interact with others. Many in the building industry found these changes to be an opportunity; others found it to be a significant threat.
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February 12, 2021
Was 2020 Really the Year of the DIY’er?
With new remodeling market data available, it’s time to recalibrate building product marketing strategies for a new remodeling market trajectory.
Marketers of building materials for the remodeling industry faced early 2020 as an enigma. There were no reference manuals on how the remodeling market behaves during a pandemic. With households required to stay-at-home, and many both working and schooling their children from their homes, it forced homeowners into a lifestyle that may have proven their current homes inadequate. There were open questions that could re-define the home remodeling market.
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January 26, 2021
Brick Exteriors: Traditional Choice with a Solid Future
Over the past couple decades, Home Innovation Research Labs has been tracking the popularity of new home exteriors through our Annual Builder Practices Survey. Based on the 2020 survey, we reported that brick, after a gradual long-term decline in share of new home exterior wall materials, saw back-to-back years of rebound in U.S. single-family detached homes.
In December 2020, Home Innovation conducted a survey of more than 200 builders on behalf of the Brick Industry Association to learn what they and their homebuyers value in clay brick. The findings point to a strong perception of beauty, quality, and safety for brick exteriors among builders, and an indication that their future use of clay brick is likely to remain strong with continued homebuyer demand and popularity of architectural styles they see as a “good fit” with brick.
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January 19, 2021
Insight into Consumer Purchasing During Pandemic
For many, 2020 was the year that COVID-19 disrupted their lives in every conceivable way. From the perspective of homeownership, 2020 was the year we improved our outdoor living spaces; caught up on needed home repairs and improvements; organized our stuff; and made our homes more comfortable and functional places to spend time – at least that’s what the findings of our 2021 Consumer Practices Survey suggest. More than 110,000 U.S. and Canadian households participated in the Consumer Practices Survey, which was completed in December 2020, supplying us deep detail on their home and property improvement and repairs projects.
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November 20, 2020
Good Fences Make for … New Opportunities for Plastics & Composites
The pandemic has created a renewed demand for outdoor living projects--with people spending more time at home, and seeking to make their at-home experience a little more pleasant. As consumers have scaled back spending on travel, dining, and entertainment, they have directed some of those additional resources to outdoor living projects.
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October 23, 2020
Strategies to Save on the High Cost of Lumber
With lumber prices soaring in the past several months, home builders are scrambling for ways to keep the cost of construction in check, fueling a renewed interest in alternative materials. While they may still not be cheaper than lumber, the spike in lumber prices is causing many builders to rethink the cost/benefit tradeoffs of traditional alternatives to lumber — steel, concrete, and plastics.
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October 5, 2020
Improved Construction Speed is Primary Benefit Builders Expect from Offsite Construction
During NAHB’s Building Systems Week in late September, I presented “Builder Attitudes Towards Systems-Built Construction,” which summarized the findings of three different recent studies related to builder views and usage of offsite construction methods and factory-built components. Overall, the market is bullish toward use of offsite methods, and some sectors—such as multifamily—have been much quicker to adopt these into housing production.
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July 24, 2020
New Builder Practice Data Regarding Indoor Health and Comfort
With COVID-19 dramatically changing attitudes on how people view housing, there is a strong renewed interest in healthy indoor environmental quality. This is not only due to a desire to keep homes “virus free,” but also because people are spending more time in their homes, so a comfortable and healthy home environment is playing a bigger role in their lives. Findings from our latest Builder Practices Survey, which we fielded among home builders in early 2020, serve as a benchmark for industry practices at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak. Moving forward, we expect that building practices regarding indoor health and comfort will continue to follow the major change in consumer attitudes about this topic.
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