In the Media

With more homeowners hunkering down because of the coronavirus and staying in their homes longer, the home improvement industry experienced a surge of demand last year, although demand is expected to fall this year, according to the Leading Indicator of Remodeling Activity, released quarterly by the Remodeling Futures Program at the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University.

“For such a basic and fundamental measure, the number of households in the US is largely a mystery,” three researchers from Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies lamented in 2015.

Homeowners are anticipated to spend about 4.8% more by the first quarter of 2022, according to the Leading Indicator of Remodeling Activity. The indicator, from Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies, offers a short-term outlook for home improvement spending.

Homeowners spent nearly $420 billion on home improvements in 2020, according to the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University.

While nearly 11 million tenants–a quarter of the US’s tenant households–qualify as “extremely low income,” earning 30 percent of AMI, and while the median tenant made just $40,500 a year in 2018, the vast majority of Affordable Housing built through all mechanisms targets higher income thresholds.

President Joe Biden is seeking to ease a national affordable housing shortage by pushing local governments to allow apartment buildings in neighborhoods that are currently restricted to single-family homes.

Despite the economic downturn caused by the pandemic, home renovation spending increased 3% last year to $271 billion, according to a new report from Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. This year, JCHS is forecasting spending will reach $281 billion.

Home remodeling spending rose from approximately $332 billion in the third quarter of 2020 to an estimated $339 billion in the fourth quarter, according to the Leading Indicator of Remodeling Activity (LIRA) from Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

The US economy retracted 3.5 percent last year, but home improvement spending increased nationally by 3 percent to nearly $420 billion, according to a report from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

Total spending on home and yard improvements is actually expected to decline by 1 percent this year in Greater Boston, according to Harvard’s Joint Center on Housing Studies, which has compiled data on remodeling expenditures for more than 25 years.