Remodeling Spending in Major Metropolitan Areas

Julia Reade

This paper is the first to give a detailed account of the variation of behavior across a large set of U.S. locations. Aside from a few articles that use simple variables to control for region (Baker and Kaul, 2000; McArdle, 1996) or categorically measure a level of urban development, such as central city, suburb, or nonmetropolitan, (Poulos, 1996; Baker and Kaul, 2000; McArdle, 1996) little has addressed geographic patterns in remodeling. Few articles hypothesize as to how geography could affect remodeling (Pollakowski, 1988; Bodgon, 1996; McArdle, 1996), and interpretation of any results is limited. One article (Pollakowski, 1988) does model home improvement in four different metropolitan areas, and finds significant differences in spending behavior across metros…