In the Media

Home improvement and repair spending grew by nearly 3% to $420 billion in 2020, per a recent study by Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies.

An April 15 forecast from the Remodeling Futures Program at the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University showed that spending on renovation and repairs is expected to increase at rates higher than year-ago levels through the end of 2021.

Daniel McCue, a senior research associate at the Center, said there is evidence that as the pandemic eased in late summer and early fall of 2020, many young adults moved out.

Kermit Baker, a senior research fellow at Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, says setbacks in renovations are being fueled by global factors. ”The cost of lumber has tripled over the last three months …We’re seeing a lot of markets that are slowed down by fundamental problems in the supply chain.”

Monthly housing costs are much lower for single-family rentals compared with single-family home purchases, according to Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, and the typical income of families living in those rentals is more modest as well.

In 2020, as the U.S. economy fell by 3.5 percent, spending on home repairs and improvements rose more than 3 percent, to nearly $420 billion, according to Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

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.

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.

“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.