The Sweet Spot Remodeling Blog

Oct 14 2009 2:06PM | Permalink | Email this | Comments (0) |
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By Jonathan Sweet

A majority of GuildQuality members think the housing market gotten just as about as good as it's going to get in the near future, according to the company's latest quarterly survey. 

GuildQuality's members are remodelers, builders, contractors and developers.

Some of the key findings from the latest survey:

• The confidence index for all types of members was down from the second quarter, although more members are still forecasting an improvement in the market (31 percent) than a downturn (5 percent) over the next 6 months.
• Replacement contractors were expecting the biggest improvement in business, developers the least.
• The 31 percent of members expecting the market to improve is down from both the 2nd (46 percent) and 1st quarter (41 percent) of this year.
• 64 percent of members are expecting the market to be unchanged over the next 6 months.
• 49 percent expect their own business to improve over the next six months, down from 56 percent in both the 1st and 2nd quarters of the year. Only 8 percent expect their business to decline.

The full report also includes several pages of verbatim comments about the market from its members. You can check that out here.

Although GuildQuality's members seem to be less optimistic than earlier this year, they are still much less pessimistic than they were at the end of last year. And less optimistic might not be the way to put it -- for most companies, the starting point for the first quarter was a lot lower than it is now, because business has improved. It's not great, but most remodelers I talk to are doing a lot better than they were six months ago.

The results also reflect the reality that we're not getting back to the boom days anytime soon.