Expenditures on home improvements are projected to stall year-over-year, with the current 6.3 percent growth in spending tumbling to 0.4 percent by Q2 2020, according to the latest Leading Indicator of Remodeling Activity (LIRA) from Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies' Remodeling Futures Program.

"Declining home sales and home-building activity coupled with slower gains in permitting for improvement projects will put the brakes on remodeling growth over the coming year," said Chris Herbert, managing director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies, in a statement. "However, if falling mortgage interest rates continue to incentivize home sales, refinancing and ultimately remodeling activity, the slowdown may soften some."

"With the release of new benchmark data from the [Census Bureau's] American Housing Survey, we've also lowered our projection for market size about 6 percent to $323 billion," says Abbe Will, associate project director in the Remodeling Futures Program. "Spending in 2016 and 2017 was not nearly as robust as expected, growing only 5.4 percent over these two years compared to 11.9 percent as estimated."
 
Source: Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies

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