Naturally, you would think that a pandemic would harm the economy and reduce the amount of money people spend on home improvements. But as Keyrenter Arkansas Management says, that doesn’t seem to be the case. In fact, the opposite appears to be true. People spent more on home improvements after March 2020 than they did at any other time in recent history.
Houzz recently conducted a survey of more than 3,700 people who use its site. It found that around three in five people were thinking about beginning a home renovation or design project during the pandemic.
The main factor driving this seems to be forced saving in other areas. Homeowners, for instance, could no longer spend money on holidays or meals outside the home during the lockdown period. In response to this, they transferred their spending to other areas, including home improvements.
Economists call this type of shift in spending patterns the “substitution effect.” When people can no longer buy the usual products or services that they would consume, they shift their spending patterns and move to the next-best alternative. In this case, that next best thing appears to have been home improvements.
You can also understand why the home improvement market benefited so much from the circumstances of the lockdown. Many people had to stay in their homes for long periods of time. So, naturally, the idea of improving them came up. Furthermore, incomes did not dry up, as many thought they might, even during the most extreme phases of the lockdown. People continued to earn money by working from home or through furlough payments, providing the disposable cash that they needed to continue upgrading their properties.
Home improvements also became intrinsically more valuable during the pandemic. Under normal circumstances, people are out of the home for vast stretches of the day working. But during COVID-19, the opposite was true. Many consumers were inside all day, showing them just how important their home environment was to them. Making home improvements becomes more impactful while residing in a property 24 hours a day compared to spending large portions of the day in a place of work.
COVID-19, however, is impacting the home improvement market in other ways besides demand.
It Is Revealing Limitations Of Current Accommodation
Because people are spending so much time at home, homeowners are becoming more aware of the limitations of their properties. For instance, many are complaining of insufficient storage space for supplies and groceries. Others now working from home lament the absence of a home office or separate place to work, away from the family. And the lack of access to gymnasiums is also now a leading home frustration. In total, 19 percent of homeowners told Houzz that lack of storage space was a problem, with 17 percent complaining about having no good place to work, and 12 percent saying that a lack of exercise space was an issue.
The home improvement market, therefore, is being skewed in the direction of pandemic-related alterations. Gym and office renovations are becoming more popular as people seek to replace services they would usually get outside of the home.
Visualisation Tools Are Changing How Homeowners Work With Renovation Professionals
The need for social distancing is also changing the way homeowners interact with professionals in the renovation market. Instead of face-to-face consultations, many are now working remotely.
33 percent of professionals, for instance, say that they are using digital invoicing to bill their clients. More than 16 percent say that they use visualisation tools to show homeowners what their finished projects will look like. And 13 percent are using video calls as a way of talking to homeowners instead of traditional consultations.
Despite being new, homeowners appear to be responding to these new digital methods well. More than 60 percent say that they are making them feel more comfortable when buying home improvement-related services.
Professional Hiring In The Home Improvement Industry Remains High
Lastly, as you might expect, hiring in the home improvement industry remains high. As news of the pandemic spread, renovators worried that homeowners would switch to DIY approaches to reduce the likelihood of COVID-19 transmission. But that doesn’t appear to be the case – at least according to data collected by Houzz. Their statistics show that homeowners hired professionals for around three quarters of all projects. And, furthermore, 59 percent of homeowners say that they are planning on using professional help to improve their homes in the near future.
Overall, therefore, COVID-19 appears to have positively impacted the home improvement market. It is driving demand and may have helped it to become more digital.
This article was written by https://www.awilsonroofing.co.uk/ – professional roofers in Surrey.
